Guest guest Posted January 28, 2011 Report Share Posted January 28, 2011 This varies with every patient... It depends on how much CD20 protein you have on the b-cell membrane to begin with. This is the target rituxan needs to work. It varies from dim to bright and some rare cases very bright. Most CLL patients are dim, meaning we don't have a lot to begin with, where as NHL patients are mostly CD20 bright. It is depleted with each treatment cycle of rituxan use and it returns to some point as the white blood cell counts increase again. In time rituxan stops working and the patient is rituxan refractory. There are some indications that Ofatumumab may work longer than rituxan and perhaps GA101 will work because of higher ADCC and an improved direct killing mechanism. Mark Cragg and Glennie in Southampton, UK are currently studying this... Here is a recent paper: http://www.haematologica.org/cgi/content/full/95/1/135 Dr. Hamblin on rituxan: http://mutated-unmuated.blogspot.com/2010/08/how-does-rituximab-work.html HTH ~chris CLL CANADA > > How many cycles of Rituxin can a patient receive till it is no longer " effective " in treating their CLL? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You are posting as a guest. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.