Some Follicular Lymphoma Updates

There have been a bunch of little bits of Follicular Lymphoma news that have come to me in the last week or so. I'm not sure they are worth having their own full post, so I'm going to list them here in shorter form. They're still worth knowing about.

First, a couple of personal things:

The ASCO conference, which usually happens in late May/early June, will be entirely online this year. (ASCO is the American Society of Clinical Oncologists, and their conference is one of those places where researchers talk about their work. Usually a few good FL presentations every year.) The online-only conference is good news for me, in some ways, since I can't ever travel to ASCO anyway. This year, the conference organizers made registration for Patient Advocates free, so I can "go" to the ASCO conference this year! I hope I'll have lots of interesting research to report on. Look for it in a couple of weeks.

Second, the video conference that I had planned has slowly come together. It will happen next Monday, May 18, at 12:00 noon Eastern Standard Time (9:00am Pacific Standard, 4:00pm Greenwhich Mean). If you're interested, email me. As I said before, I don't have any real agenda for this. It's a way of connecting with other people with Follicular Lymphoma in ways we don't usually get to do. Connections are especially important these days. Let me know if you're interested.

Now on to the FL news:

• NICE (The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) in the UK has recommended that the NHS fund the use of Obinutuzumab + Bendamustine for FL. I don't know the UK's health system at all (I barely undertsand my own country's), but I'm guessing this means greater access to an effective treatment for more FL patients.
• The inhibitor Umbralisib received Orphan Drug status from the FDA for some FL patients. Umbralisib is a dual inhibitor of PI3 kinase-delta and CK1-epsilon proteins, both of which are necessary for cancer cells to grow. "Orphan status" is a special designation that can be given to treatments that will help fewer than 200,000 patients, making it harder for them to make a profit (which means there is less incentive for a company to develop them). The status gives them that incentive.
• The FDA announced it is adding 3 months to its review of Liso-cel, a CAR-T treatment that might be approved for some aggressive lymphomas, including grade 3b Follicular Lymphoma

 None of those announcements offer anything new, exactly, for FL patients, but they should give us some hope about what might be available in the future. (And in the UK, what might be easier to get right now.)

And I'm sure I'll have more good stuff for you at the end of month, when ASCO opens up and I can see what's going on.