Drug aids destruction of lymphoma cells.In the cancer called diffuse large B-cell lymphoma diffuse large B-cell lymphoma Oncology A B-cell lymphoma that is the most common type–accounting for 30-40%–of NHL, which occurs in children and adults. See Lymphoma, Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, WHO classification. , certain white blood cells--B cells--in the lymph tissues proliferate out of control. These malignant immune cells crowd out their healthy comrades and impair a person's ability to fight disease. Standard chemotherapy sends this lymphoma into remission only in 30 to 40 percent of patients. Scientists in Europe now report that a drug called rituximab, or Rituxan, boosts the remission rate significantly. The researchers treated more than 300 patients who had large B-cell lymphoma B-cell lymphoma is a type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma affecting B cells. Types include:
One year after the treatments, 83 percent of the people getting rituximab were still alive, compared with 68 percent of the patients receiving standard chemotherapy. Lymphoma in 76 percent of the survivors on rituximab had gone into complete remission complete remission Complete response Oncology Disappearance of all signs and symptoms of disease–eg, cancer, multiple sclerosis, with normalization of all biochemical and radiologic parameters, as well as a negative repeat biopsy–pathologic remission. , compared with 60 percent of the other survivors, reports Bertrand Coiffier of the Centre Hospitalier in Lyon, France. Coiffier described the results in San Francisco San Francisco (săn frănsĭs`kō), city (1990 pop. 723,959), coextensive with San Francisco co., W Calif., on the tip of a peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay, which are connected by the strait known as the Golden at the 42nd annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology. He says that when completed sometime next year, the study will include data on 400 patients observed for 18 months. "I believe this is a landmark study," says Oliver W. Press of the Fred Hutchinson
Rituximab has been marketed in the United States since 1997. It's a monoclonal antibody monoclonal antibody, an antibody that is mass produced in the laboratory from a single clone and that recognizes only one antigen. Monoclonal antibodies are typically made by fusing a normally short-lived, antibody-producing B cell (see immunity) to a fast-growing , a protein designed to bind to to contract; as, to bind one's self to a wife s>. See also: Bind a specific molecule. Rituximab locks onto CD20 antigen, a molecule found on mature B cells whether or not they're malignant. This binding recruits other immune cells and proteins to kill off these B cells. Because nascent stem cells stem cells, unspecialized human or animal cells that can produce mature specialized body cells and at the same time replicate themselves. Embryonic stem cells are derived from a blastocyst (the blastula typical of placental mammals; see embryo), which is very young in the bone marrow lack CD20 antigen, they avoid rituximab's onslaught and then gradually replenish the supply of B cells. "We think this antibody, plus [chemotherapy], may be a new standard of care for this lymphoma," Coiffier says. The cause of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma remains unknown. In the United States this year, about 17,000 people, at an average age of 64, will receive a diagnosis of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, Press notes. |
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