Bendamustine, Baby

Every year at ASCO, it seems that each cancer has one big bit of news -- more than one, if we're lucky. This year, it seems like the updated results for the study of Bendamustine vs. CHOP are the big story for indolent lymphomas like Follicular NHL.

And boy is it big. You can read about it here, here, here, here, and here.  And probably a bunch more other places, but I stopped looking.

The study's author, Dr. Rummel, added to what we already knew from previous updates from this study: that Bendamustine (also known as Treanda) plus Rituxin is just as effective as CHOP-R, but with less toxicity and fewer side effects. (He points out again that none of the 500 or so people in the study lost their hair -- hair loss being a sign of toxicity.)

But the big news, now that there's been more time to follow patients, is just how much better the Progression Free Survival seems to be: 31.2 months for CHOP, and 69.5 months for Bendamustine. In other words, the median for people on CHOP was that they went less than three years before the disease came back or got worse. For people on Bendamustine, it was almost 6 years.

Pretty dang impressive. All of the data from this study has been presented at conferences, so it has not gone through peer-review (that is, other lymphoma experts have not reviewed the data yet and approved it for publication in a medical journal -- more reliable than just a conference presentation). I think there will be some louder calls for the study director to make that to happen now.

I also think this will push Bendamustine over the edge, in terms of it being a preferred first-line treatment over CHOP. I'm sure there will still be some old school oncologists who will continue with CHOP or even CVP, but I can see Rituxan (on its own) and B-R being increasingly the go-to choice very soon.

This is excellent news.