Message 14036 Yahoo! from BobLLL "When you state the "presumed" advantages of Lym-1 you probably should make clear that these are the advantages claimed by proponents. They are not supported by any objective source, as far as I know. As to not killing healthy cells, this claim has been interpreted by proponents as meaning there is no decrease in blood counts as a result of Lym-1.
This simply isn't true. Denardo, in Overview of Radiation Myelotoxicity Secondary to Radioimmunotherapy using Lym-1 as a Model, Cancer (suppl) 1994; 73:1038-1048, says "Myelotoxicity primarily manifested by peripheral blood thrombocytopenia has generally been reported to be the dose-limiting toxicity in experimental and clinical trials of radioimmunotherapy. This has also been our experience when Lym-1 was used to treat patients with B-cell malignacies as reported herein." The article goes into detail on this point.
The presumed superiority of TCLN's radiolabeling technology is also hard to show without relying solely on the sources connected with the company.
I raise these points because there often often posts here along the lines of "if the technology is so good, why are we in the market basement?" There are doubts. If one considers only the story as told by the company and its fans, one will not get a balanced view.
I would say Oncolym's (Lym-1) potential advantage is that research so far shows that is probably more effective, with less toxicity (but not zero toxicity) against aggressive lymphomas than its competitors. Whether it is as effective against indolent (low-grade) lymphomas has not been answered as yet."
----------------------------------------------------------------------
First, somebody asked whether we read Yahoo! Expecting a denial. I deny it. I go through sometimes and pick my favourites to read. So I miss a lot of good stuff.
Since the key to success in lymphoma treatment [all cancer treatment] is to get every last, damn, metastatic mutated cell, and they are polymorphic, expressing a variety of antigens and other characteristics, the monoclonal antibody industry and antilymphoma treatment industry overall seem balkanized, resulting in failure.
Treatments with single products are mostly ineffectual because they let newly mutant cells escape, which then go on to kill the person involved, albeit delayed somewhat by the treatment.
Each company is pushing their own single treatment. But a cocktail of monoclonal antibodies, mixed in proportion to the expressed antigens on the individual patient, would be much more likely to kill every last mutant. The concentration of each could be reduced so that overall toxicity is no worse, but the proportion of mutants killed would be greatly enhanced.
This is different from other medical treatments which require a certain level of concentration to be effective at all.
It seems that somebody should be doing Oncolym/Rituxan/Bexxar treatment with TNT infusion into significant tumors. With or without chemotherapy. Is anyone doing that or will lymphoma treatment remain a mess of Kosovo/Bosnia/Croatia/Serbia treatment, with misery for all and mass graves? A Balkan life with no end in sight to conflict and death.
I wish a company would buy the lymphoma interests of IDEC, Coulter, Genentech, Techniclone and do some more effective and faster lymphoma treatment.
In 1974 my wife and I visited Yugoslavia and I wondered at the time how stern, unhappy and blank nearly all faces were in a town we stopped in. I had never seen and still haven't another place like it. Now I know why; the prospects were poor. I guess they knew.
It seems self-evident that mutant, malignant lymphoma cells have many points of identification and weakness and each of these should be attacked because no point of weakness occurs on all the mutant cells other than in the very early stages, when cures are more likely, obviously due to the fewer variations the treatment has to deal with.
Is that right Bob? Or am I up a gum tree?
Maurice |
