Mapatumumab: New Antibody for Follicular Lymphoma?

The clinical research field is currently awash with new treatments for follicular lymphoma and other forms of lymphoma. Most of these, of course, will not be marketed, either because they will turn out not to work at all or because they will not be noticeably more effective than alternative treatments. It's still too soon to say where mapatumumab will fit into this picture.

Mapatumumab is a monoclonal antibody drug -- an antibody designed to bind to a specific site on the surface of cells, in this case cancer cells. In this way it is similar to the better-known (and established) drug rituximab (Rituxan, MabThera), which is a standard drug in first-line treatment of follicular lymphoma. Where rituximab targets the CD20 protein, though, mapatumumab goes after a more novel target: Tumour Necrosis Factor-Related Apotosis-Inducing Ligand Receptor 1, Death Receptor 4 -- more simply, TRAIL-R1. Once it binds to that site, it triggers apoptosis -- programmed cell death, a genetic command to self-destruct after suffering damage which cancerous cells normally bypass.

Research Highlights: Week of December 20, 2010

Beyond my own ramblings, here is an overview of some of the published work that may be of interest to people living with lymphoma, over the past week. I'm skipping over the recent material from ASH, which is of interest in itself. More on that later, perhaps, but there were plenty of interesting papers there, too. Here I look at the December 16 issue of Blood, the December 20 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology, December 2010 issues of the British Journal of Cancer, CA, Clinical Lymphoma, Myeloma & Leukemia, Lancet Oncology, and Leukemia & Lymphoma (as dense as always).