It's been a while since I highlighted a potential new NHL treatment (it's not like they come along every day, after all), but this one seems worth highlighting.
It's called AVL-292, and it is in the class of treatments called "Btk Inhibitors." There are a couple of others already out there, CAL-101 probably being the better known of them.
A Btk Inhibitor works by blocking development of Btk, Bruton's Tyrosine Kinase. Btk is an enzyme, and while no one knows exactly what it does, it seems to play a role in B cells' development. (B cells are a type of white blood cells that go haywire in many lymphomas, including Follicular NHL.) The Btk inhibitor works by blocking (or inhibiting) Btk, and thus disrupting the B cell's development. No Btk = no B cell = no malignancy = no cancer.
As explained in the article, "The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and Avila Therapeutics Enter Partnership to Accelerate Development of AVL-292 For Patients with Cell B Malignancies," AVL-292 is the latest Btk Inhibitor to be developed. What is significant from this piece is that The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society is partnering with the drug maker to speed things along. I trust the LLS, so I'm going to assume that their support is an important validation.
A different piece gets more into the data from the phase 1 trial (very limited number of patients). I know CAL-101 has been a big help to a number of people in the support group, so I hope AVL-292 is an improvement on that somehow.
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