I see in the BBRS statement, reiterating
the buy on ARIA (5/6/99) that "Because of
the severity of GvHD, it is our belief that
it will be absolutely essential for FDA-
approved gene therapies to include a control
switch that can kill the altered or doror
cells if any signs of GvHD arise."
I think that statement threw me off a bit
in my attempted explanation over on the Yahoo
board: Ariad's small molecule fas receptor
activator is supposed to rapidly end a GvHD
immune response which can occur after allogeneic
BMT...or autologous T cell therapy. No matter
what the source for the cell therapy, all cells
have been altered to contain the suicide gene.
After the GvHD is averted, therapy can begin again...
Apparently, I was not quite on track with that--
from the link to the chapter on GvHD at Oncolink:
"...a mild or moderate case of chronic GvHD seems
to confer an anti-leukemic effect on the patient.
Thus a little bit of GvHD in leukemic patients may
actually be desirable. Completely depleting donor
bone marrow of T-cells has not only reduced the
incidence of GvHD, but has resulted in replapse
rates as high as 65% among certain subsets of
leukemic patients studied."
Anyway, my latest stab at an answer to sicososa's
question over on the Yahoo board would now be this:
Deplete the patient's T-cells if that is neccessary,
and aggressively treat the patient with the engineered
donor T-cells. Having control over those T-cells would
obviously give the oncologist an amazing level of control...
forget about additional treatments, if you can carry
that first treatment right to the edge and get things
done the first time.
So...I wonder how long it takes for a person to be obviously
free of the cancer? I sure wish I had paid attention
when my grandmother had lymphoma, I am terribly ignorant
about all this. But I suspect I have a good stock here
with Ariad, 30M marketcap is absurd, and I still wonder
if the 5M toxic was on purpose to keep the stock depressed
...just long enough for the warrants to expire worthless
and shake out a lot of weak hands, grumble grumble;-) |
