Discussing the Treatment Landscape for CLL

Alexey Danilov, MD, PhD, associate director, Toni Stephenson Lymphoma Center, and professor, Division of Lymphoma, Department of Hematology & Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation, City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses the current treatment landscape for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and how it has evolved.

With the addition of targeted therapies into the picture, patients with relapsed/refractory CLL have more options than ever before.

Patients can be treated with a number of options, including Bruton tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitors like ibrutinib (Imbruvica) and acalabrutinib (Calquence), PI3K inhibitors, B-cell lymphoma 2 inhibitors, venetoclax (Venclexta), and more.

Transcription:

0:08 | Over the last few years, we have seen a major paradigm shift in therapies for chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Now, introductions of novel targeted therapies such as the BCL-2 inhibitor, venetoclax, as well as BTK inhibitors, including ibrutinib and acalabrutinib in the treatment of CLL, have resulted in a significant reduction of use of chemoimmunotherapy regimens.

0:29 | Fludarabine-based therapies are still occasionally used in younger patients with mutated IGHV status. However, given the significant survival advantage of novel therapies, the use of this regimen has declined by a lot. Novel regimens result in significantly better safety profile as well.