Tycel Phillips, MD, associate professor, Division of Lymphoma, Department of Hematology & Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation, discusses the recent approval of subcutaneous epcoritamab (Epkinly) for the treatment of patients with relapsed/refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma after 2 or more lines of systemic therapy and its impact on the field.

According to Phillips, the convenience of this agent makes it an exciting introduction to the field. It can be considered an alternative to chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, which can be administered in the community setting.

Transcript:

0:08 | So, I think the biggest impact is obviously, these drugs can be given to the community, they don't have to necessarily be given in a specialized registered CAR center. So, it gets the drug into the hands of more physicians with hopefully gets into the treatment algorithm for more patients. I think the biggest thing moving forward is the community physicians and those who have not prior experience with bispecifics, or CAR T, getting adjusted to some of the common adverse events that are consistent between bispecifics and CAR T, which have a cytokine release syndrome CRS or, you know, immune cell activated neurological symptom or ICANs, which are neurological complications.

0:49 | I think as we get more physicians comfortable to drugs more comfortable dealing with some of these adverse events, they will get more comfortable not having to meet these patients for this type of treatment.

0:58 | We will see a substantial increase in patients treated with these by specific antibodies, likely because of the ease of gimmies compared to what we do with CAR T, they probably will take up a larger share of the market in this patient group at the current time with the communities physicians involvement, which if these responses that we're seeing remained durable, which of those who have made me obtain a complete remission, most of those patients are remaining in remission with longer follow from the study at those remissions remained durable. And we're starting to cure a subset of these patients afterwards. Again, it'll just increase the number of patients we can actually give an effective and curable treatment for large cell lymphoma, as the ultimate goal is to cure these patients because again, because of how this cancer behaves, patients cannot live with this cancer, so we have to get rid of it. Or, you know, it is fatal.