Some Follicular Lymphoma News

I've had a lot of stuff piling up in my Drafts folder, so instead of giving you a full post for each, I'm going to give you some short comments on a bunch of them.  

• First, my Instagram Live session last Thursday went well. As I told my host Yolanda afterwards, it was as much as you can have talking about cancer. If you'd like to watch it on YouTube, you can see it here. We talked a lot about some of the emotional parts of having Follicular Lymphoma. It was my first IG Live experience, and while I've made a few videos for other folks, I may try to get more into sharing my story in this way. (Watch until the end for a special guest appearance!)
• As expected, last week the FDA recommended some changes to the way PI3K Inhibitors are approved for blood cancers. As I said in my last post, there were some concerns about Overall Survival and safety. Some patients has severe side effects from the treatments -- severe enough to affect the Overall Survival statistics. The FDA really didn't have much choice but to change the way they have been treating PI3K Inhibitors and their approval. As one of the members of the committee that voted (Dr. Christopher Lieu of the University of Colorado Cancer Center) said, "The bottom line is, if we aren’t improving length of life with any therapy but exposing patients to toxicity and therefore decreasing their quality of life, are we truly helping our patients? I don’t believe so.” Just to be clear: the FDA isn't saying that these treatments can't be used anymore, and they aren't saying that they won't approve them. But they do want to see more data before approval to make sure they are safe and effective. They will basically have to follow the same process as every other treatment, rather than being able to get approval earlier than usual. Now it will be up to the makers of the inhibitors to decide if it is worth the time and money to bring the treatment to patients. A couple of links, if you're interested: a nice write-up about the meeting from OBR Oncology, with some quotes from committee members; and a video of the 4 hour meeting where it was all discussed. 
• Good news from Europe! The European Medicines Agency (EMA) Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) recommended that the bi-specific treatment Mosunetuzumab be approved for Follicular Lymphoma. Final approval should come soon, which is great news.  

I'm reading about a few more interesting FL issues, but I'll write about them more soon.