This week on the CLL Society website, we share an interview with my trial doctor, Dr. John Byrd out of Ohio State University, discussing how CLL drugs get to market and what the implications are for patients in terms of clinical trial design, especially in phase 1 trials for chronic lymphocytic leukemia.
We met at the CRC (CLL Research Consortium) Scientific Meeting in San Diego in April 2015. The CLL Society also co-sponsored a patent forum the day before the science meeting began.
There are several take-aways from my interview, however one that is critical is that we be well-informed, not just about the drugs we might be taking, but also of the details of the clinical trial design itself.
Please take a look at cllsociety.org/2015/09/crc-... to see the interview and important related links.
The CLL Society’s inaugural newsletter will be emailed out midweek and we are really excited about it: Dr. Byrd is has written a long Q+A on ibrutinib; Dr. Jennifer Brown gives practical advice on idelalisib; I cover the basics of just what is CLL/SLL and more in a monolog and transcription; plus several patients including WWW have written diverse and helpful articles. If you are interested, please sign up at cllsociety.org/newsletter-s... .
Another reason to sign up is that we will posting a backlog of great lectures and interviews and articles on CLL from CRC and my time at iwCLL over the next few months leading up to ASH and getting the alert is your best friend in knowing what new material we have posted. As always all our content is free and doesn’t demand any of of your information to be seen.
Save the date: We are planning a post-ASH patient education forum and CLL Society LA support group launch in conjunction with City of Hope on Dec. 12, 2015. More details to follow.
Exciting times, but us patients still have to keep encouraging on the researchers. We aren’t to cure yet. We need to keep pushing.
Stay strong.
We are all in this together.
Brian
If you want a personal response, or just want to stay in touch, please email me at bkoffmanMD@gmail.com. I have no other way of contacting. Thanks. Stay strong. After all, we are all in this together. And please visit our website: http://cllsociety.org for the latest news and information.