[JPC]

Immunotherapy, USA Today article

by JPC on Wed Apr 13, 2016 7:09 am

Checking my morning regular news, there is a notable article regarding research and donations for immunotherapy for cancer to the tune of $250M for five research institutions:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/04/13/billionaire-announces-250-million-cancer-immunotherapy-funding/82821198/

Sean Parker gave the donation. It reads to me as if this is of the level that can make a real difference. He shows some interesting knowledge of the cancer research landscape in that he wants to jumpstart immunotherapy into front line treatment in order to yield the greatest benefit for cancer patients. At present, the immunotherapy is used more as "salvage" treatments. Generally, new medicines or treatments get approved much easier in the salvage setting, as that is the greatest need, and good approaches make it into the front line eventually, but that takes longer. As Sean mentions, although this approach makes sense in terms of the established rules for clinical trials, it has the effect of leaving a great deal of benefit to cancer patients on the table, and loosing the opportunity to avoid considerable pain and suffering to a multitude of patients, who could potentially have many more years of relatively healthy and productive life with the more effective upfront therapy.

Multiple Myeloma is not specifically mentioned but in general, as a cancer of the immune system itself, much of the research in immunotherapy for other cancers can potentially be applied to multiple myeloma at some level.

My apologies for scooping the Myeloma Daily briefing, however, I think that Boris and team would agree that a USA Today article would just be too easy for them.

[Mike F]

Re: Immunotherapy, USA Today article

by Mike F on Wed Apr 13, 2016 12:47 pm

I saw an article on this as well. I have to believe that this sort of aggressive pursuit of new immunotherapies will benefit us whether they're specifically going after myeloma or not. This is very heartening..

[NStewart]

Re: Immunotherapy, USA Today article

by NStewart on Wed Apr 13, 2016 1:24 pm

There was an article in today's Philadelphia Inquirer about the new donation for immunotherapy research. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, Abramson Cancer Center are one of the 5 groups included in the grant. The CART-19 trials were done there with adult and children with leukemia. Other CART trials have been ongoing including 2 for people with myeloma.

This is an exciting addition to the funding that is being generated for immunotherapy research. I heard one of the MD/PhD clinician/researchers from Abramson speak yesterday about immunotherapy. His specialty is in leukemia and lymphoma. He was very excited about the progress that is being made in understanding the immune system and its role in cancer and how it can be manipulated to disrupt the proliferation of cancer cells.

Nancy in Phila

[Ted Kan]

Re: Immunotherapy, USA Today article

by Ted Kan on Thu Apr 14, 2016 1:38 am

Yes, very good news.

As I've mentioned in several previous posts I've been in the Empliciti (elotuzumab) study for newly diagnosed myeloma patients since early January 2015. In addition to being an effective immunotherapy, it has few, if any, side effects assuming no allergic reactions. And for elotuzumab, allergic reactions seem to be very unusual.

More knowledge about how the immune system interacts with cancer cells would seem to hold the promise of new drugs other than monoclonal antibodies. And the funding seems to be focused on expediting use in all cancer patients. Good news indeed.