Hard to believe it's almost December. All of the signs are out there: 20 degree weather in Connecticut, Salvation Army bell ringers in front of Stop & Shop, and now our first ASH expert preview -- this one from Lymphoma Rock Star Dr. Bruce Cheson of Georgetown University.
Medscape Hematology has a video from Dr. Cheson with some of the things he's excited about at ASH. The video is accompanied by a transcript (though if you don't have a Medscape account, you can't read beyond the first page).
Dr. Cheson's big theme seems to be that, while there are reports of studies involving traditional chemotherapies (including R-CHOP and Bendamustine), the real excitement is from newer, non-chemo agents. He seems especially high on Ibrutinib, and mentions several studies. He also discusses briefly some Kinase inhibitors.
It seems like CLL (Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia) is the big winner at ASH this year, with a bunch of important and exciting studies being discussed (Dr. Jeff Sharman addressed these in his excellent blog about 10 days ago).
Unfortunately, Dr. Cheson doesn't devote a lot of time to Follicular Lymphoma (I guess I found more to be excited about there than he did). He does mention Rituxan maintenance, though reluctantly ("Maintenance won't seem to go away....I'm not a big fan....").
The video is a little under 9 minutes, but worth it, even for a Follicular Lymphoma patient, just to see how excited he is about going to ASH. One quote from him kind of sums it up for me: "Great new drugs which will be changing the landscape of Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma."
So sayeth the Rock Star.
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