As I said last time, there really isn't much exciting coming out of ASH this year. I should clarify a little -- there isn't much coming out dealing with NHL. Apparently, there's some great stuff coming out that deals with leukemia.
Medscape's ASH preview highlights two studies related to different types of leukemia. One focuses on Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML), which, as the article notes, was at one time a certain death sentence. Now, with tyrosine kinase inhibitors, the disease is manageable for many patients -- except those with a particular genetic mutation, which made that form of CML resistant to kinase inhibitors. A presentation at ASH will describe the successful phase 2 trial for ponatinib, which seems to work for the patients with this mutation.
The article describes some research on other types of leukemia, too.
So all the really exciting stuff is happening in other blood cancers.
Which is fine -- any advances help us all, even if they are not direct. The techniques and the assumptions behind the treatments may open up doors for the rest of us sometime.
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