On March 22, 2018, I was an outpatient at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance where I was transfused with my own T-cells that had been harvested a few weeks earlier, then genetically reengineered to attack my cancer, multiplied manyfold, then reinjected into my bloodstream to rest up, grow again,
Bill Ludwig, 75, of Upper Deerfield Township passed away on Sunday, January 31, 2021 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania where he had been hospitalized since December 1, 2020. This is the same hospital where, 10 years earlier, his life and the whole world of cancer treatment
🎶 It was 2 short years ago today, my CAR-T cells really learnt to play, They have been going in and out of glands, no guarantee that they would expand But let me tell their story to you, the treatment that so new these years, Brian Koffman’s splendid CAR-T
I have not been able to eat grapefruit for more than a dozen years due to its annoying chemistry that interferes with the metabolism of multiple medications. It has been called the forbidden fruit due to its potent inhibition of cytochrome P450 3A4 (CYP3A4) that can lead to toxic
I stopped taking ibrutinib on February 20, 2020, a few months short of my 8-year anniversary. As I discussed in my last blog post, this was a difficult decision with conflicting advice. Would my CLL remain quiescent or would my lymphocyte count shoot up? Would my ITP (immune thrombocytopenic
On May 7, 2012 I took my first dose of PCI-32765 at Ohio State University, in Columbus, OH as part of a phase 1 trial of the drug that would later revolutionize the treatment of CLL as ibrutunib. But for the first several years it was known only by
Dr. Brian Koffman explains his post-CAR-T bone marrow biopsy which will employ next generation sequencing by means of clonoSEQ testing that can find as few as one in a million CLL cells, not by looking for the cells themselves, as flow cytometry does when it scans the cells’ surface
Our own Dr. Koffman was interviewed at ASH 2019 about importance of attending ASH for advocates, his own research, his highlights from ASH and much more. You can watch it here.