Hi Bill,
I'm not sure if anyone here has had LMB-2, but it has been discussed. I've posted some of the responses from WAID below. It appears she has seriously considered entering the LMB-2 clinical trial for her refractory HCL, but that distance (3,000 miles from her home) was a determining factor in her choosing IFN/Rituxan instead.
Perhaps the doctor and nurses working on this clinical trial at Bethesda can put you in contact with former patients, though honestly I'm not sure how these things work. Their contact information is at the bottom of this page:
http://bethesdatrials.cancer.gov/leukemia/nci06c0150/default.aspx
Let us know what you decide. By the way, I do remember reading recently that in general not enough people are entering clinical trials.
Although I do not meet the eligibility requirements for LMB-2, I would like to try something new the next time I need to get treated for HCL. The cladribine I received in July 2007 seems to have worked very well for me in that my counts are excellent and I've been in remission since, but I also got very ill subsequent to treatment because I got an infection. I was out of work for three months. Maybe I'll bring up the topic of trying something else the next go round when I meet with my oncologist at Memorial Sloan in December. I haven't done so yet, because I didn't want to jinx my remission.
Vince
http://www.network54.com/Forum/263810/message/1151472014/Anyone+take+LMB-2-
Anyone take LMB-2?
June 27 2006 at 10:20 PM whatamIdoing (no login)
Has anyone taken LMB-2 before? It's sort of like BL22, except it attacks CD25 instead of CD22. It seems to be back in trials again, for people with refractory/progressive/bad HCL. One of the study reqs describes a previous trial:
"In that trial, 4 of 4 patients with chemoresistant HCL had major responses, including one complete (CR) and 3 partial remissions. The patient with CR entered the trial transfusion dependent and now still has normal hemoglobin and platelet counts over 7 years later."
This sounds like a pretty good response to me, and I was curious if any of you had encountered this drug before.
-w.
http://www.network54.com/Forum/263810/message/1151553921/This+seems+to+be+a+new+clinical+trial
This seems to be a new clinical trial
June 28 2006 at 9:05 PM
I've heard about LMB-2 for a few years, and it seems to be slow in development primarily because there isn't enough money to pay for it. The LMB-2 trial that I'm looking appears to have opened in April 2006. You can read about it here:
http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct/show/NCT00321555 and find the start date about halfway down the page.
There's another study here
http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct/show/NCT00337311 that appears to have been posted just this month but doesn't actually list a start date.
LMB-2 is only useful for the 80% of HCLers who express the CD25 protein, so it's clearly not for everyone. If (like Kreitman's lab has presumably done) you have to choose between spending money on a drug which might (at best) treat 100% of HCLers, and spending it on a drug which might (at best) treat 80% of HCLers, you would generally pick the 100% one first. My assumption is that this is why BL22 has been the priority.
BTW, half of LMB-2 is a mouse Fv antibody (which means that we can expect allergic cross-reactivity between Rituxan and LMB-2 [and BL22, for that matter]), and the 'other half' is the same as the 'other half' of BL22, which means that another fraction of people will be unable to (usefully) take this drug (and simultaneously unable to usefully take BL22).
All of these things should be relatively straightforward to determine through standard tests.
-w.