Discussing the Evolution of Immunotherapy in Lymphomas

Joshua Brody, MD, assistant professor of medicine, hematology and medical oncology, and director of the Lymphoma Immunotherapy program at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, discusses how he sees the use of immunotherapy evolving in coming years.

In the past and present, a plethora of good therapies have been available for patients with lymphomas, Brody says, such as chemotherapy, antibody therapy, small molecule inhibition, and BCL-2, BTK, and PI3K inhibition. However, Brody says we are still lacking active immunotherapy, like PD-1 inhibitors which have been incredibly effective in melanoma, lung cancer, and other types of lymphomas.

In non-Hodgkin lymphoma, these adaptive immunotherapies were lacking, but, in roughly 2 years, Brody expects that more patients will be treated with immunotherapies. Bispecific antibodies have also shown promising data for the treatment of patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma and low-grade lymphomas like follicular lymphoma. These treatments have induced very high remission rates and durable remissions in some patients, Brody says.

There is still a struggle with antigen loss with the bispecific antibodies. Brody notes that it is nice to have developed some agents that have the potential to address the antigen loss, however, prior to a mechanism of tumor escape.

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