Rituxan

The web site CancerNetwork.com posted an interesting article about a month ago called "Monoclonal Antibodies in Advanced B-cell Lymphomas." I've had it bookmarked for about a month, and I'm finally getting around to posting it.

It's a really nice summary of what we know about monoclonal antibodies -- starting with Rituxan, and discussing the ways it has been improved, and may continue to be improved.

For example, the dosing schedule for Rituxan has been played with. It started at 4 rounds, and now it can go up to 8. Another improvement has been its use in maintenance therapy; it's been shown to prolong the effectivenes of chemo when it is given on its own, six months after chemo is finished (or thereabouts).

Plus, there are other attempts at creating new monoclonal antibodies -- lots of them. They improve on Rituxan (we hope) in lots of ways. Some are made from human antibodies, rather than from mice. Others target proteins other than CD-20 (which is what Rituxan targets), or bind more efficiently to CD-20, allowing people who have become resistent to Rituxan to have another option before chemo. I'm especially interested in Lumiliximab and Galiximab, which are made from macaques. Give me some of that monkey stuff!

Whether or not these new attempts will be better than Rituxan is still not known. Ideally, they'll be at least as good, if not better. Maybe they'll work in combination with one another and be even more effective. The point, of course, is that it all provides us with more potential options.