New Year, New Research

Happy New Year to all.

Thought I'd start off the new year with some really good NHL news: research about an improved use of antibodies -- potential for a cure that relies only on antibodies. The abstract for the full article, "Anti-CD47 antibody synergizes with rituximab to promote phagocytosis and eradicate non-Hodgkin lymphoma," comes from Stanford University, and is available here.

Lympho Bob readers no doubt know that many types of NHL have a protein on their surfaces called CD20; it is this protein that is targeted by Rituxan. Rituxan does a nice job of pushing back follicualr NHL, but does not cure it. However, when combined with some chemotherapies, Rituxan increases the chemo's effectiveness. And when used on its own, it fights things off with minimal side effects (as I know firsthand).

What the Stanford researchers have found is that another protein, CD47, can be present as well, and that when it is present, it usually means bad news. But they have found that combining an anti-CD47 antibody with the anti-CD20 antibody (Rituxan) results in phagocytosis -- the cancer cells being wiped out by the body's natural defenses. This led not just to a temporary state of remission, but, they claim, a full cure.

So far, this is in VERY early stages -- the human NHL cells were placed into mice, and then tested. So there's a long way to go before this gets tried out on actual people with their own NHL cells, and I suspect it may not be as effective as it seems at first.

But then again, I could be wrong -- maybe this is the start of something very, very wonderful -- a very effective treatment with minimal toxicity.

So we'll start the new year off with that hopeful thought.