Lymphoma

Updated results from the ECHELON-1 clinical trial showed that the combination of brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris; BV) plus doxorubicin, vinblastine, and dacarbazine (AVD) as first-line therapy improves overall survival (OS) in patients with stage III-IV classical Hodgkin lymphoma compared with standard therapy with doxorubicin, bleomycin, vinblastine, and dacarbazine (ABVD).

Ibrutinib (Imbruvica) may allow patients with newly diagnosed mantle-cell lymphoma (MCL) to forego autologous stem-cell transplantation (ASCT), according to results of the 3-arm randomized TRIANGLE clinical trial presented at the 64th American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting and Exposition.

More than 50% of adults with refractory or relapsed large B-cell lymphoma (LBCL) who were not deemed candidates for high-dose chemotherapy and hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation (HSCT) had complete responses (CRs) following treatment with the chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy lisocabtagene maraleucel (Breyanzi).

The antibody–drug conjugate polatuzumab vedotin-piiq (Polivy) added to R-CHP (rituximab [Rituxan], cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, and prednisone) achieved a 27% reduction in the risk for progression or death compared with the standard regimen of R-CHOP (rituximab, cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, and prednisone) as first-line therapy for patients with intermediate- and high-risk diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL).

Febrile neutropenia (FN) is a serious side effect of many cancer treatments and can lead to severe infection and sepsis with potentially fatal consequences.

The addition of the PI3K inhibitor copanlisib (Aliopa) to rituximab (Rituxan) reduced the risk for disease progression or death by 48% compared with rituximab alone in patients with relapsed indolent non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) in the phase 3 CHRONOS-3 clinical trial.

A total of 80% of patients with relapsed or refractory indolent non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) achieved a complete response (CR) to axicabtagene ciloleucel (Yescarta), and those responses have proved durable, according to the interim results of the phase 2 ZUMA-5 study, said Caron A. Jacobson, MD, Medical Director, Immune Effector Cell Therapy Program, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, at the ASCO 2020 virtual annual meeting.