Cancer Conference Update: A Multimedia Review of Key Presentations from the 2016 American Society of Hematology Annual MeetingAbstracts 643, 644: Monoclonal antibodies — 11-1F4 and NEOD001 — targeting light chain deposits in patients with AL amyloidosis
2:03 minutes.
TRANSCRIPTION:
DR MIKHAEL: I think these 2 abstracts are going to be very significant in the future of amyloid care, because right now we know that the physiology of amyloid is that light chains are made in the bone marrow. They circulate in the blood. And then they go through this mysterious conformational change and get deposited in the organs. And right now we don’t have any means of getting to the organs and pulling out that amyloid. All we do is, we try to shut off the production with chemotherapies that we’ve borrowed, if you will, from myeloma. These 2 abstracts, I think, are very important, because they’re introducing for the first time an antibody that actually goes right into the organ where the amyloid is deposited and helps destroy those beta-pleated sheets that are formed through amyloid to actually affect organ response. DR LOVE: So now what are these antibodies to, exactly? DR MIKHAEL: So they’re antibodies directed at the fibrils that are formed when the amyloid deposits in the organ. So if you can accept my analogy, Neil, I say to patients that amyloid is like walking into a room where there’s a sink in the corner and the water’s been turned on. And the water is filling up the sink and falling on the floor. The bone marrow is the faucet. The peripheral blood is the sink. But what’s really dangerous is when the water falls onto the floor. And up until now, all we’ve been able to do is try and shut the water off. And if there’s a lot of water on the floor, then we just hope eventually it’ll evaporate. But these new drugs are actually like mops to come and take the water off the floor, so it doesn’t damage the floor. And the floor can be the heart, can be the kidney. And so it’s really a paradigm shift in how we treat amyloid to not only, if you will, prevent more organ damage but try and reverse current organ damage by having an antibody that melts down those fibrils in the organ. |