Want to avoid chemotherapy or taking an expensive medication forever for your CLL? I may have a clinical trial for you.

[bkoffman]

Before we had ibrutinib and idelalisib and the other TKIs in the pipelines, for those of us wanting to avoid myelosuppressive therapies, we had HDMP +R.

Dr. Castro and the team at UCSD have championed this therapy and are now moving the bar higher by upgrading to Gazyva as the antibody to the industrial strength steroid in their new clinical trial.

No chemo and you're done in 6 months. There are risks with both meds, but most should be short term.

Please see my blog bkoffman.blogspot.com for my comments and links to the trial itself and the background research.

Admin: Removed brackets around blog URL so that link will work

[nvp815]

Hi Brian, It is always great to hear about these non-chemo based trials. Just curious if you have any guess when we might see non-chemo options used in the front line setting for most, if not all, CLL patients. I know there are many of us out there who hope to avoid chemo in our futures, but is that a reasonable wish? I am still on W&W, so every time I read about one of these other options, I get a little more hopeful that just possibly many of us won't need to ever go the chemo route. Am I being unrealistic?

Thanks for all you do for this community!!

[bkoffman CLL CURE Hero in reply to nvp815]

It's trial like this and others that are inching towards frontline use. I suspect except for 17p patients, it is years away. That said HDMP + R are both approved and could be used now outside of a trial. HDMP is dirt cheap.

[nvp815 in reply to bkoffman]

Thank you for your reply Brian. I look forward to hearing the results of this exciting trial. Stay well and thanks again!

[PaulaS Volunteer]

Sounds like a very attractive option... Thanks for posting.

So much new is happening re CLL treatments these days - I'm sure we all wish this sort of research had happened a few years earlier... But it gives a lot of hope, especially for those in early stage illness.

Paula

[pitbull]

Interesting read and lets hope they have abreakthrough soon in the development of a treatment to replace chemo. I for one and ever hopefull they will develop something before my time comes for treatment, I would certainly prefer to take a pill for the rest of my days in preference to chemo and the problems it brings.

Kirk

[bkoffman CLL CURE Hero]

I agree.