I get the newsletter online from Dana Farber, and today in the email was a report on a new finding that can impact our future treatment. Dr Jennifer Brown reports that a small study has shown that a common antimicrobial drug has been found to reduce the growth of CLL cancer cells. The drug is Pyrimethamine which has been used in AIDS patients to halt the progression of parasitic infections and also against malaria.
The drug targets a protein STAT3 which triggers genes to cause the multiplication of CLL cancer cells. In a small trial of only 16 CLL patients who had progressed disease and for whom the other medications were not stopping the progression, 8 of the patients had a good result in which the CLL progression was stopped for a while. Dr Brown and a co worker Dr David Frank feel that the low doses used in this study of Pyrimethamine could likely be increased with a longer lasting effect. Dr Brown is thinking that it might ehnance the results in combination with the other targeted theraputics now being used to treat CLL. More research of course needs to be done.
Its too early to know if this can impact many of us, but certainly anything new that can help in any way is a good thing. From Dr Brown's final comments in the article, I can see that she feels the big promise would be in combination with the other Novel Targeted Therapeutics, and of course that would mean multiple trial studies if they ever get underway. Anything that can stop the multiplication of the CLL mutated white cells would help in all cases; at least, I would think so.
Agreed! I wonder if the future (and my future) is a series of drugs or large combinations, or both. But regardless, knowing that no one drug will likely last me forever (I am 57 now), the more in the pipeline the better!
This is certainly interesting. What I would like to know is could this help patients just after diagnosis? Or those in the very early stages of the disease. If it could delay treatment just by a few years that would be a huge win.
With respect to statins, 3D software modeling suggested statins may be helpful. A study done in Manitoba, Canada suggested the type of statins that were associated with lower incidence of CLL. In this case, the statins appear to be preventative on their own, as well as synergistic with venetoclax. My understanding is the 3D software suggested simvastatin could possibly be synergistic with venetoclax, and studies were done to see if large subpopulations on statins did indeed have a lower incidence of CLL that the overall population.
For anyone interested, this software type was developed to help repurpose already existing drugs, and was used in creating the mRNA vaccines (and is nowadays involved heavily in new drug development). Once scientists know a chemical pathway involved in a disease state, the various enzymes/receptor sites are looked at, for easy-to-access,or something unique (spike protein in the case of Covid, enzymes key to cancer cells in the case of, say, BTK inhibitors) about it. A three dimension model is ascertained, this model structure is loaded into a computer, and compared with the 3D structure of thousands of known drugs. It's how the early interest in ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine arose for treating Covid. And how older drugs already used for other things, are being looked at for new uses.
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