Hello Rick, I think as well that this is a very exciting approach to CA therapy. I have been staying away from the word "cure" however. At the moment, barring that Monday's results should contradict what I am about to say, we have a treatment which has put 60% of the patients in this study in TOTAL remission for about 36 months. If I am not mistaken, comparable rates of remission are currently achievable with other forms of therapy. This is not by any stretch of the imagination to say that IDEC C2B8 is not new and exciting. One unknown is the elimination of BCL-2 from patient's blood and bone marrow. Again, theoretically, the absence of BCL-2 could be correlated with a reduced chance of relapse but, these patients will have to be followed for a longer period of time before this suspicion is confirmed. If it is confirmed we will be closer to "cure".
What IDEC is onto here is a therapy which accomplishes what former therapies are sometimes capable of but with few, if any of the side-effects. This is a lot bigger deal than it reads as at first glance. Many patients about to undergo traditional therapies for CA are quite frightened by the potential side-effects. They are rather bad. C2B8 relatively benign side-effect profile leaves the pateint in whom it might not work (so far it seems to provide at least partial remission to 100% of pateints) free to go on to other therapies. With other therapies, patients sometimes lack the physical strength to undergo further therapy in the near term. C2B8 is cheaper and given on a outpatient basis. Eric Hecht may or may not be conservative in his estimation as to whether C2B8 will become front-line and at what point but, I honestly believe that for the reasons I have just given above, any doctor/HMO/patient involved in a decision to select a therapy for NHL is going to pick IDEC's. It is not only a matter here of whether IDEC's drug results in remission for "x"% and Chemo or Radiation does "x"% but of great importance is how the patient feels and how much hospital time a patient spends and how strong the patient is should additional therapy be needed and how much insurance companies save and etc. IDEC has traditional CA therapy beat hands-down here and these amount to no small competitive edge in my opinion. For patients these advantages are enormous. I do believe this drug and drugs relying on a similar mechanism will eventually change the face of CA therapy. The idea that immunoconjugates had the potential to one day do this is old. It is just the fact that one now seems on the verge of going to market which is new and I think that event is going to catch many by surprise apparently.
Remember, IDEC has a patent on PRIMATIZED antibodies. This patent may be worth the current stock price alone. I have little doubt that once the "genie" is out of the bottle, immunoconjugates will be designed to intervene against any number of cancers potentially. They could be used to deliver therapeutic agents accurately to any tissue which they can be manufactured to recognize once a way is discovered for them to exist in the human body without being recognized and destroyed by our own immune systems. That was one big hurdle which IDEC has apparently found a way around while many others have failed.
I COULD BE WRONG but, in coming years, this exact technology is going to generate excitement which now we would find difficult to believe and if that is the case, IDEC looks to be the one at the forefront. I have heard this exact approach to CA discussed only recently as though it were science fiction. Yet -- here it is.
Guess I'm in the mood for cheer leading tonight!
Have a good evening
BENNETT |
