Hematologists Should Consider What Comes Next for Patients With DLBCL

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Elizabeth A. Brem, MD, discusses the familiarity of treatments among oncologists for patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma in a Case-Based Roundtable event.

Elizabeth A. Brem, MD, an assistant clinical professor in the Division of Hematology/Oncology, School of Medicine at the University of California, Irvine, considers the general discussion of treatment for patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) from a Case-Based Roundtable event she led.

Some oncologists can get comfortable using the same treatment for patients if they have used it previously and are familiar with it, even when new therapies become available. Since loncastuximab (Zynlonta) was approved more recently than tafasitamab (Monjuvi) plus lenalidomide (Revlimid), Brem says some of the oncologists she spoke with were more used to using the combination in DLBCL.

Although bispecific antibodies demonstrated efficacy in this setting, only approximately half of patients will experience durable responses and will therefore need another line of treatment, according to Brem. This make having a diverse treatment toolkit and plans for sequencing therapy important for these patients.

TRANSCRIPTION:

0:10 | It's interesting to see what people have used [for treatment]. At the end of the day, many times, once you use something, you become comfortable with it. So even as new [therapies] come out, sometimes we have things we're very comfortable with, and so we'll pull them out. I think in general, maybe just because it's been approved a little bit longer, more people have a little bit more experience with tafasitamab/lenalidomide than they do with loncastuximab.

0:33 | There were some people who had used [loncastuximab], there's some people who hadn't used it, but maybe after talking about it, or maybe seeing situations where it might be useful to them and their clinical practice. And I think that while bispecific antibodies have been great and they're highly efficacious, and many people do well, the unfortunate reality is only about half the patients we give them to are going to have a durable response. So we do need to be thinking about what comes next, because unfortunately, for many of these patients, there will be a what comes next. So it's good to know what toolkit we have, and talk about the best way to sequence therapies for patients.

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