The Evolving Treatment Landscape of Mantle Cell Lymphoma

Cyrus M. Kahn, MD, hematologist in the Division of Hematology and Cellular Therapy at West Penn Hospital of Allegheny Health Network, discusses the evolution of the treatment landscape for patients with mantle cell lymphoma (MCL).

Though MCL is an aggressive lymphoma that for the most part does not have a cure, the field has seen major changes in the ways to treat patients in the relapsed/refractory setting.

Over the past few years, treatment options for patients with MCL have expanded, bringing Bruton’s tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitors and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy to the table.

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0:08 | With mantle cell lymphoma, I think it's changed quite a bit in the second- and third-line settings. We had BTK inhibitors come out about 7 years ago or so for mantle cell lymphoma in the relapsed setting. That was a big advance. And now, the second has been CAR T-cell therapy in the relapsed setting. That has been a major advance and patients are living longer.

0:33 | It's unfortunate that mantle cell lymphoma is an aggressive lymphoma, for the most part, and we can't cure it. We must deal with a 2-pronged problem for a long time. As far as frontline treatments, the landscape hasn't changed much. I think we still use aggressive chemotherapy than we take the patients to an autologous transplant for consolidation in the hopes that we would induce a deep remission for a long time. But the major change has been how we treat relapsed/refractory mantle cell lymphoma.