Comment by zzzeek

3 years ago

My dad was fortunate enough to get into a trial at Sloan for Obinutuzumab for Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia. At the moment, after 6 weeks of treatment, the percent of cancerous cells in his bone marrow has gone from 95% to 5%. The treatment was very intense as it overloads the kidneys on the first few treatments due to the dramatic amount of cells being flushed out. This is a cancer for which there was not much treatment previously other than extreme chemotherapy which still left little hope for complete remission. A family friend was also treated for Non-Hodgkins' lymphoma on another drug trial and she's now in full remission.

my uninformed impression is that there's a lot of new cancer treatments happening now that can turn the tide for a lot of types of cancer.

For leukemia, there are a lot of promising new treatments and clinical trials. For metastatic solid-state tumors, much less. We're still in the dark ages of cancer treatment.

That's great for your dad. Thank you for also distinguishing between types of cancer and the nebulous term cancer, many people don't make the distinction.

  • googled first to get the correct spellings and all that, been on hacker news a long time...

Similar story to the husband of my sister-in-law's sister (I think that's how you say it).

Metastatic Melanoma, had spread to his stomach. Got on the trial for Ipilimumab and is still here a decade and change later.

I’m glad to hear about the positive outcomes for your dad. I hope he beats the cancer. It’s an exciting time to be alive.

That's amazing news. A close friend of mine recently died of this same leukemia (pretty sure.) I wish you and your family the best of luck.

Probably a decade ago a friend of mine passed from Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia in his 20s. I'm not sure what the differences are between ALL and CLL (other than knowing the differences between acute and chronic in a more general sense of course) but glad to see they are making at least some progress.

  • the chronic form is often written off when first diagnosed as "it will never affect you" - it can take decades to cause bigger problems. Dad's 80 and it's been causing bigger problems for some years. It would be surprising if there aren't new treatments for the acute form you mention as well.