This is good news, even though it could be used to rule out Vidaza as a promising treatment for many patients, because it can let those patients avoid a treatment that is less likely to work and let them move on to more promising treatment choices. Conversely, a low or normal BCL2L10 level can indicate a better-than-average chance of a response to Vidaza. Both of these discriminations can therefore increase the success rate of Vidaza treatment across all MDS patients.
It's interesting that BCL2L10 is found to be higher than normal in MDS patients, even those who will respond to Vidaza. They report anecdotal evidence that a higher BCL2L10 level in a patient who is responding to Vidaza treatment is evidence that the patient is becoming resistant to that treatment, so flow cytometry during Vidaza treatment may produce indications of when to stop treatment.
The full PDF of this article can be downloaded from
here.
An aside for the curious:
This page explains how to pronounce the word
apoptosis. The second 'p' is silent.