Therapies Discussed at CFS Show Responses for Hematologic Malignancies

Marc J. Braunstein, MD, PhD, clinical assistant professor, Department of Medicine, co-director, Autologous Stem Cell Transplant Program, NYU Winthrop Hospital, NYU Langone Health, discusses chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies, Bruton’s kinase (BTK) inhibitors, and brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris) that were highlighted at the 2020 Chemotherapy Foundation Symposium (CFS).

Braunstein says there is a lot of enthusiasm for CAR T-cell therapy for patients with hematologic malignancies. Deepu Madduri, MD, of Mount Sinai, is the lead author of the study of JNJ-4528 by Johnson & Johnson for patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma, which achieved a 100% response rate. The data for this was presented at the 2019 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting.

There have also been remarkable responses from patients with Waldenström macroglobulinemia when treated with novel BTK inhibitors now that additional agents have become available in that setting. Steven M. Horowitz, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, spoke about the data for etoposide and brentuximab vedotin, the monoclonal antibody targeting CD30, for patients with peripheral T-cell lymphoma that express that antigen. Improvements in progression-free survival have been shown for those patients when that drug is combined with chemotherapy, according to Braunstein.