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Biotech / Medical : IDPH--Positive preliminary results for pivotal trial of ID -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (1510)	3/9/1998 5:00:00 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 1762

"Which of course is not especially fatal compared with lymphoma." Oops, famous last words about tuberculosis. According to Michael Colgan who I went to hear speak tonight about health in general and antioxidants, muscle health and all that "host resistance" stuff in particular, tuberculosis is now considered lethal, with more people dying in New York right now than ever before. He quoted a particular drug resistant strain which is doing the damage. Survival only 20% or something - I can't remember the exact figures, but WHO expecting a huge increase in tuberculosis deaths over the next few years. Anyway, tuberculosis and other diseases are increasingly dangerous says he. Necrotizing yuk bug being a mutant virally linked Streptococcal infection with increasing frequency and very damaging results. I guess a lot of the tuberculosis happens in Aids related cases. Yes? Maybe that explains a lot of increase.

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (1510)	3/11/1998 2:38:00 AM
From: DMB	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1762

Thanks for the follow up. I would have been very surprised had you found someone who would have advised Rituxan. Our thoughts and hopes are with your son for a speedy recovery after the completion of his treatments. With regard to the immune therapy, there is a long history of immune therapy trials that have gone on at Stanford for low grade lymphomas. Their first patient, over ten years ago, did great...success has been harder to come by since. I saw some data with regard to Rituxan that was presented at the American Society of Hematology meetings last December. The CD20 molecule, the cell surface antigen against which rituxan is directed, is a fairly large molecule. Rituxan is directed against a 5 amino acid component of that molecule. When other anti CD20 molecules were screened, 4 other molecules directed against the same 5 amino acids were identified. One of these was the antiB1 antibody used by Coulter. Of the 5 antibodies, only Rituxan could produce cell lysis in an in vitro cell cytotoxicity assay. It may be that Rituxan is working through some mechanism other than an immune mechanism. Immune therapy sounds good but it isn't the only explanation for the mechanism of action of a monoclonal antibody.