Immunotherapy

Here's a link for another very informative presentation, this one called Immunotherapy in Lymphoma, by Dr. John P. Leonard, a well-known lymphoma specialist.

He discusses three different types of immunotherapy: monoclonal antibodies, RIT, and vaccines. All of them attempt to manipulate the patient's immune system in some way to fight off the lymphoma.

Fans of Lympho Bob are all too familiar with monoclonal antibodies like Rituxan. As with some other reviews of monoclonal antibodies, Leonard talks about the many different second generation antibodies that are in the research pipeline. So far, results on these seem to be inconclusive -- they work as well as Rituxan. We're hoping for something that will be an improvement; I don't think they get FDA approval unless they can show that they are better. Maybe one of the many newer ones will hold the key to a breakthrough.

Vaccines are a similar story -- great in theory, so far not meeting their promise. Still, Leonard has some hope.

Then there's RIT. Seems more and more that it's doing things that other treatments just don't or can't do.

All in all, the presentation is a nice overview of this type of treatment. And it's nicely focused on the future, which is where our focus should always be.