Older Patients With iNHL Experience Similar Benefit to Younger Population in MAGNIFY Study

David J. Andorsky, MD, a medical oncologist at Rocky Mountain Cancer Centers, discusses the findings from a subgroup analysis of patients with relapsed/refractory indolent non-Hodgkin lymphoma (iNHL) over the age of 70 in the phase 3b MAGNIFY clinical trial, which were presented during the 2020 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting.

MAGNIFY evaluated treatment with induction rituximab (Rituxan) plus lenalidomide (Revlimid) followed by maintenance with rituximab either with or without lenalidomide, and the subgroup analysis compared the findings for patients over the age of 70 with the younger population with iNHL. According to Andorsky, the major finding from this analysis is that the older population did quite well compared with the younger group, and the 2 populations were comparable.

The objective response rate was about the same around 75% in both arms, with roughly 40% complete responses, and the median progression-free survival was about 40 months in the older population compared with 41.6 months in the younger group, which was also similar, Andorsky says. Overall, the regimen appeared well tolerated with similar rates of neutropenia. Grade 3 fatigue was observed more frequently among the older group. The rate of treatment discontinuation due to adverse events was slightly higher in the older population, but the regimen was overall tolerable, Andorsky says.

In his experience, Andorsky has found the regimen to be quite tolerable in patients with iNHL, and the regimen is particularly promising because it’s a chemotherapy-free regimen and it is easy to administer.