ASH Annual Meeting

After 7 years of follow-up, single-agent ibrutinib demonstrated continued efficacy in the frontline and heavily pretreated, relapsed/refractory settings for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia and small lymphocytic lymphoma.

Lisocabtagene maraleucel induced an 81.3% best overall response rate and 43.8% complete response in high-risk patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia who were heavily pretreated and had previously received ibrutinib, according to dose-finding results presented at the 2018 ASH Annual Meeting. 

Zanubrutinib induced an overall response rate of 83.5% in patients with relapsed/refractory mantle cell lymphoma, with many responses demonstrating durability, according to the results of&nbsp;a phase II trial.<br /> &nbsp;

According to results from a small clinical study, checkpoint&nbsp;inhibitors in combination with&nbsp;chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy showed promise for improving CAR T-cell persistance in some patients with relapsed B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;<br /> &nbsp;

In a study of transplant-eligible patients with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma, daratumumab added to bortezomib, lenalidomide, and dexamethasone induced at least a very good partial response in all patients, including a complete response in 63% of patients, at the end of consolidation therapy.<br /> &nbsp;

Patients with&nbsp;acute lymphoblastic leukemia saw a reduction in the risk for recurrence after receiving a stem cell transplant for the first time following treatment with CD19 chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy.

According to a retrospective phase I/II study, over 80% of patients with relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia responded to concurrent treatment with ibrutinib and the CD19-targeted chimeric antigen receptor CAR T-cell therapy, JCAR014.¹ Findings from this study were presented at&nbsp;the 60th American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting.

The need for frequent red blood cell transfusions was reduced with luspatercept&nbsp;in nearly 53% of patients with anemia associated with low- to intermediate-risk&nbsp;myelodysplastic syndrome.

Victor Chow, MD, senior hematology-oncology fellow, University of Washington, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, discusses a retrospective study assessing outcomes of patients with large B-cell lymphomas and progressive disease following CD19-Specific CAR T-cell therapy during the 2018 ASH Annual Meeting.

After a median of 19 months of follow-up, durable objective response rates were sustained with tisagenlecleucel in patients with relapsed or refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. These updated findings from the phase II JULIET study were presented at the 2018 ASH Annual Meeting.&nbsp;

According to updated data from the phase II ELIANA study,&nbsp;CD19-targeted CAR T-cell therapy tisagenlecleucel as treatment of&nbsp;pediatric and young adult patients with relapsed or refractory acute lymphoblastic leukemia sustained rates of&nbsp;relapse-free survival and overall survival at 24 and 18 months.&nbsp;

Progression-free survival was significantly improved with both ibrutinib as monotherapy and in combination with rituximab when&nbsp;compared to bendamustine plus rituximab as a treatment for older patients with newly diagnosed chronic lymphocytic leukemia. These data were presented at the 2018 ASH Annual Meeting.

Ian Flinn, MD, Director of the Blood Cancer Research Program, Sarah Cannon Research Institute, discusses the safety, efficacy, and MRD negativity of a combination of venetoclax (Venclexta) and obinutuzumab (Gazyva) in patients with previously untreated chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) during the 2017 ASH Annual Meeting.<br /> &nbsp;

The combination of brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris) and nivolumab (Opdivo) demonstrated promising clinical activity in patients with&nbsp;relapsed/refractory Hodgkin lymphoma,&nbsp;according to results from a phase I/II trial presented at the 2017 ASH Annual Meeting.

Treatment with the novel PD-1 inhibitor cemiplimab induced responses in half of the patients with&nbsp;Hodgkin lymphoma in a phase I study of patients with B-lymphoid malignancies; among patients with&nbsp;B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma treated with the monotherapy, the overall response rate was 11.1%, according to a poster presentation at the 2017 ASH Annual Meeting.&nbsp;

Treatment with&nbsp;tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah) continues to excite the possibilities seen with chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy with impressive responses seen with the therapy in patients with&nbsp;relapsed/refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. In the phase II JULIET trial, an overall response rate of 53.1%&nbsp;was observed, according to findings presented at the ASH Annual Meeting.&nbsp;

Adding rituximab (Rituxan) to ibrutinib (Imbruvica) in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) did not improve progression-free survival (PFS) or overall survival (OS) versus ibrutinib alone, despite there being a faster time to complete remission.

According to results of a phase Ib/II trial presented at the 2017 ASH Annual Meeting, the frontline triplet regimen of atezolizumab (Tecentriq), obinutuzumab (Gazyva), and bendamustine was associated with an overall response rate (ORR) of 85% (Modified Lugano criteria; independent review) in patients with follicular lymphoma.

Jesus Berdeja, MD, Director of Multiple Myeloma Research, Sarah Cannon Research Institute, discusses results of a study that explored bb2121, an anti-BCMA CAR T cell therapy, in heavily pretreated patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma during the 2017 ASH Annual Meeting.

Updated results from the TRANSCEND study demonstrated that&nbsp;liso-cel (lisocabtagene maraleucel), formally known as JCAR017, induced an 81% objective response rate and a 63% complete remission rate in patients with relapsed/refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.

In patients with&nbsp;relapsed/refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), ibrutinib (Imbruvica) in combination with venetoclax (Venclexta) induced an objective response rate (ORR) of 100%, according to findings from the TAP CLARITY clinical trial.&nbsp;

The addition of brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris) to doxorubicin, vinblastine, and dacarbazine (A+AVD) reduced the risk of progression and death by 23% in patients with advanced-stage Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) compared with standard&nbsp;ABVD (doxorubicin [Adriamycin], bleomycin, vinblastine, and dacarbazine) chemotherapy, according to results of the phase III ECHELON-1 clinical trial.&nbsp;

Treatment with the chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy axi-cel&nbsp;(axicabtagene ciloleucel; Yescarta) demonstrated improvement in long-term survival rates in patients with refractor, aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma,&nbsp;according to updated findings from the pivotal ZUMA-1 trial.

Mogamulizumab improved progression-free survival in previously treated patients with cutaneous T-cell lymphoma by 4.6 months compared with vorinostat (Zolinza),&nbsp;according to findings from the phase III MAVORIC study.

Incidence of venous thromboembolism (VTE) recurrence was reduced in patients with cancer with oral rivaroxaban (Xarelto) therapy compared with dalteparin (Fragmin), the current standard of care, according to results from the Select-D pilot trial presented during the 2017 ASH Annual Meeting and Exposition.

Phase Ib results presented at the 2017 ASH Annual Meeting demonstrated that zanubrutinib (BGB-3111), an investigational BTK inhibitor, had encouraging rates of clinical activity in patients with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, including an overall response rate of 78% among patients with marginal zone lymphoma.

Kerry Rogers, MD, Assistant Professor, Internal Medicine, Division of Hematology, The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses a phase II trial of early intervention with ibrutinib (Imbruvica) in patients with asymptomatic, high-risk chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) during the 2017 ASH Annual Meeting.<br /> &nbsp;

Matthew S. Davids, MD, Associate Director, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Center for Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia, discusses a study that explored optimizing checkpoint blockade as a treatment for relapsed hematologic malignancies after allogenic hematopoietic cell transplantation during the 2017 ASH Annual Meeting.<br /> <br /> &nbsp;

For patients with mantle cell lymphoma, initial and maintenance treatment with the combination of lenalidomide (Revlimid) and rituximab (Rituxan) were found to be feasible, safe, and elicit clinical activity.

Ropeginterferon alfa-2b is noninferior to hydroxyurea in terms of complete hematologic response for the treatment of polycythemia vera, and has the advantage of being a safer and more tolerable therapy.