Great job in keeping us informed and up to date. I just passed by 5th year since diagnosis and my wbc is still under 30 and the rest of my counts are normal. I noticed my Cll has slowed down after I started eating a healthier and vegitarian diet and lowered the stress level. My immune system has definetly worked better and I haven’t been sick in 5 years. I believe that an eventual cure will come from reving up the immune system and having your own body clean up the CLL. I pray this clinical trial leads to a cure. All the best and let’s celebrate a cure in our lifetime. bb

Joost

I do not believe their protocol allows for irradiating the blood rather than a chosen lymph node. As for the prior MyVax participation, I do not think it would exclude you by itself – but you should ask Dr. Foon.

You state:

• “Step one is to identify a clearly swollen lymph node close to the surface, one that is bound to be choke full of your CLL cells and easily reached.
• Step two is to subject the lymph node to low level and very targeted radiation. The idea is kill a whole bunch of CLL cells in that particular node, mash them up good and proper, so that there is plenty of debris of dying CLL cells generated. An accessible lymph node will be selected by the principal investigator. Patients will then receive two doses of low dose irradiation (2 Gy per day) to that single site on days 1 and 2.
• Notice the idea is not to try and kill all of the CLL cells, just enough to create plenty of snippets of protein characteristic of your particular brand of CLL. We have just gotten around strike one – namely, trying to identify exactly what snippet(s) of proteins to use in the vaccine. Heck, use a whole lot of snippets, throw in the kitchen sink for good measure.”

I do not currently have any swollen nodes however my WBC is very high (over 200) and my platelets are heading under 100. My peripheral blood is choke full of CLL cells. Would it be possible to radiate some blood ex-vitro and immediately re-infuse it? Also do you know if those who participated in the MyVax trial are eligible?

The reason for excluding anyone with autoimmune disease in this trial is an abundance of caution. It is an Phase-I trial and we do not want to blow it by taking chances. If things look good in this trial I am sure they will be able to extend the inclusion criteria in later stage trials.

Richard