ASH Preview

It's never too early to start thinking about the future.

(Hey -- I like that. I may put that on a t-shirt.)

(OK, just looked it up, and about a million colleges use it as an admissions slogan. Anyway....)

The annual ASH (American Society of Hematology) conference takes place this year December 8-11 in Atlanta. There's always something good that comes out of ASH -- usually a whole lot of things that are good: preliminary clinical trial results, final trial results, initial theoretical research. It's basically Blood Cancer Woodstock.

No word yet on what the presentations will be -- that usually comes in November -- but we can get a preview from Dr. Andrew Zelenetz, Head Lymphoma Guy at Sloan-Kettering (and thus someone who is probably worth listening to).

Zelenetz focuses especially on one type of blood cancer -- chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) -- and a trial for a Bcl-2 inhibitor (which might also have some relevance for NHL, too). Bcl-2 stands for "B cell lymphoma 2," and describes proteins that seem to be responsible for the chromosome switch that causes follicular lymphoma, but also seem to be implicated in allowing a bunch of other cancers to develop. Treatments that inhibit Bcl-2 would, obviously, stop them from doing their job.

Zelenetz also anticipates an update on the CAL-101 trial. I know a few people who have had some success with CAL-101. Looking forward to hearing more about what's going on there.

It's a pretty quick preview -- 2 minutes long -- but it's starting to get just a little bit more exciting around here....