ASH Wrap-Up

This isn't anything new -- just a kind of wrap-up of some of the significant stuff from the ASH conference earlier this month. The link features a video interview between two Lymphoma Rock Stars, Dr. Bruce Cheson, head of Hematology at Georgetown University Hospital, and Dr. John Leonard from Weil Cornell Medical College in New York.

Cheson and Leonard discuss some of the significant trends to come out of the ASH conference this year. Two of their discussions are relevant for Follicular NHL, and I discussed both of them earlier this month. The first has to do with Rituxan, and the role of Rituxan Maintenance. The significant study to come out of ASH questioned the necessity for Maintenance therapy (giving Rituxan every 6 months for two years after treatment), suggesting that a treat-as-necessary strategy would yield similar results, but without the expense, time, and discomfort of receiving it every six months.

The second significant trend that they point out has to do with the "love fest" surrounding GA-101, a monoclonal antibody that could be a replacement for Rituxan. I found this to be the more interesting of the discussions, given how the two doctors probe the ASH presentations. They question how comparable the GA-101 studies are to earlier Rituxan studies: they express some reservations about how successful the studies really were; but they also do point out that GA-101 holds some promise (and that it is one of about 10 anti-CD20 antibodies currently in development, which is good news if we're looking to improve on Rituxan).

Chasen and Leonard also discuss trends in research in some other lymphomas, but obviously, it's these two that stand out for me.

The link also has a written transcript of the video (which I read much quicker than the 15 minutes the video would have taken).

I think this pretty much wraps up this year's ASH conference. It was nice to see some of my own assessments backed up, at least in part, by these two men.