New Lymphoma Drug Shows Promise

Eleven of 38 non-Hodgkin patients respond to blinatumomab, study finds

By Jeffrey Perkel
HealthDay Reporter

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THURSDAY, Aug. 14 (HealthDay News) -- Preliminary results from an early trial of a new immunotherapy suggests doctors may soon have another weapon for the treatment of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

A team of German scientists and clinicians led by Patrick Baeuerle, chief scientific officer at Micromet AG, a Munich-based biopharmaceutical company, demonstrated partial or complete tumor regression in 11 of 38 human patients given low doses of blinatumomab, a protein that tethers tumor-killing T-cells to cancerous B cells.

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Each of these 38 patients had already tried a median of three standard therapies for non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and their prospects were grim, Baeuerle said.

"They could have died within months to a year or two," he said. "They were all terminally ill patients."

Four patients, all of whom received at least 30 micrograms per square-meter per day for between four and eight weeks, have been in remission at least six months; the longest has been cancer-free over 13 months.

The research was published in the Aug. 15 issue of Science.

Non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) is not a single disease. Rather, it is an umbrella term for at least 27 distinct immune system cancers, said Dr. Barton Kamen, chief medical officer of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. According to National Cancer Institute figures, there will be about 66,120 new cases of NHL in the United States in 2008, and 19,160 deaths.

NHL can involve either B or T immune cells. Blinatumomab targets that group of cancers that are caused by B cells, such as follicular lymphoma, mantle cell lymphoma and chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

The drug is what its authors call a BiTE, a kind of antibody that flags foreign particles and infected cells for immune clearance. Normally, antibodies contain two arms, each of which binds one copy of the same molecule, such as a specific protein on the surface of a bacterium or virus. Blinatumomab, though, is different: one arm binds T-cells, and the other, B cells.

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