Abstract: Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is a malignancy mainly affecting elderly people and is still considered an incurable disease. Despite recent advances in CLL treatment, relapse rates are high and often accompanied by the development of resistance towards conventional chemotherapy. Thus, new agents are needed for the treatment of these patients. In recent years, our understanding of the biological mechanisms driving CLL pathogenesis has considerably improved, and novel treatment strategies are arising. This review summarizes recent insights in CLL biology and describes several new agents and treatment strategies that are currently explored in pre-clinical studies and early-phase clinical trials. ... Read more

Abstract: Rasmussen encephalitis (RE) is characterized by chronic inflammation of one cerebral hemisphere which causes intractable epileptic seizures and progressive neurological deficits. Since antiepileptic pharmacotherapy is often ineffective the traditional therapy for Rasmussen encephalitis is hemispherectomy in one of its modern variants which renders the patient seizure free but leads to a severe deficit. To escape this dilemma, immunomodulatory therapeutic approaches such as rituximab, a monoclonal anti-CD20 antibody, offer an alternative and bear promising therapeutic potentials in Rasmussen encephalitis. ... Read more

On February 19th, 2002, the first radioimmunotherapy drug, Zevalin, was approved by the United States FDA to treat B-cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Developed by IDEC Pharmaceuticals Corp. based in San Diego, California, Zevalin works like a guided bomb targeted towards cancer cells, using CD20 antibodies as the carrier to target the yttrium-90 radioisotopes to the B cells, including the malignant B cells in patients with non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

Nearly 55,000 people are diagnosed with the disease each year in the United States, with 65% of the cases falling into a low-grade or follicular subgroup that frequently relapses and is ultimately untreatable. IDEC has ... Read more