Friends,
This week’s CLL update from the CLL Society is the first part of my interview with Professor Michael Hallek on possible drug combinations using new and old therapies in the hope of being able to offer long term disease control (he won’t use the world cure quite yet) with relatively short term therapies.
Professor Hallek heads up the important and innovative German CLL Study Group that has made enormous contributions to our understanding of how to best treat our CLL, so I’d listen carefully to all he has to say.
He has realistic concerns about the prospect of lifelong therapies and points out some of the unpleasant truths about treatments with signal blockers, such as ibrutinib or idelalisib.
But he has some ideas of what to do about those issues
To read my commentary and review and to hear the interview, please click here to access the 2014 Conference coverage section of the CLL Society website.
Therapies for CLL may never have been better than they are today, but they still have to get better tomorrow if we want to be cured.
Stay strong.
We are all this together
Brian Koffman
Volunteer Medical Director of the CLL Society