Well, the ASH conference is almost over now -- it finishes up tomorrow. But there is still lots to talk about from the conference.
It might seem like it's too late at this point, but here is an ASH preview from Lymphoma Rock Star Dr. Bruce Cheson from Georgetown University.
Dr. Cheson is always entertaining, and this video is no exception -- watch until the end for his surprise guest.
The video is a general preview of things that he is looking forward to from the conference, so he talk about more than just Follicular Lymphoma. But he does mention FL, specifically some of the studies that looked at Ibrutinib in various combinations for FL. (I think CLL is, once again, generating most of the excitement this year, but that's OK. We'll take what we can get.)
We'll see some press releases soon from university hospitals and pharmaceutical companies bragging about their ASH results. I'll pass anything along that looks interesting.
Enjoy Dr. Cheson's video.
***********************************
OK, I had saved the link to Dr. Cheson's video, and now I'm having trouble accessing that link, so I don't know if the one above will work for everybody. But if you do a quick Google search for "Bruce Cheson ASH," you should find it (it's from Medscape). If you still have trouble accessing the video, or if you are looking for the text for translation purposes, Medscape was good enough to provide a transcript, which I am pasting below:
Hey, there. This is Bruce Cheson from Georgetown University Hospital,
speaking to you for Medscape Hematology. It's that time of the year
again: the American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting preview
for 2015.
I guess the people at ASH feel obliged to give us a few
chemotherapy studies. There will be the third iteration of RCHOP-14 vs
RCHOP-21 in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. Will it be any better this
time around?
As you know, there are two basic types of diffuse
large B-cell lymphoma. There is the ABC, or activated B-cell type, and
the germinal center type. The activated B-cell type traditionally does
not do as well with standard therapy. However, certain drugs are
preferentially active in this subtype, such as ibrutinib, lenalidomide,
and bortezomib. At ASH, we're going to see the first results in large
cell lymphoma of RCHOP with or without bortezomib in this population.
Will it improve outcomes? I will not spoil the suspense.
We're
also going to see results of bortezomib as either consolidation or
maintenance following aggressive chemotherapy for untreated mantle cell
lymphoma. There are interesting data there as well.
But what
everybody wants to hear about are the novel targeted drugs. They're not
even so novel anymore; there are so many of them out there. They want to
hear about the non-chemotherapy approach for patients with lymphoma and
chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). There will be some single-agent
data, including ibrutinib vs chlorambucil—the RESONATE-2 trial.
They're
always trying to beat up chlorambucil. It's like the sick puppy out
there that always gets drugs approved because everything is better than
chlorambucil. We'll see in this trial with untreated CLL patients that
the results are extremely impressive.
We'll see the results of
ibrutinib in relapsed refractory follicular lymphoma. There was a
previous abstract that showed a response rate of 28%, but there may be
implications of a dose-response effect. Stay tuned for that one. We'll
see the results of ibrutinib vs temsirolimus in mantle cell lymphoma,
and we will see the results of venetoclax, or ABT-199, in CLL and
non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
And now, we're into the second- and
third-generation drugs. We're going to see some very exciting data on
ACP-196, the new BTK inhibitor, in patients with relapsed refractory
CLL. We will also see the idelalisib frontline data in chronic
lymphocytic leukemia. There are lots of interesting single agents, but
that's not where the action is, my friends.
The action is in
combinations. We will see ibrutinib and rituximab in untreated
follicular lymphoma. We're going to see a regimen that we developed in
Alliance with R-squared: rituximab plus lenalidomide plus ibrutinib in
untreated follicular lymphoma. We'll see various agents in combination
with bendamustine, rituximab, bendamustine and rituximab, and we will
also see venetoclax and the second-generation anti-CD20 antibody
obinutuzumab. Promising data.
Speaking
of obinutuzumab, it was approved for CLL on the basis of the CLL11
trial, in which it was rituximab/chlorambucil vs
obinutuzumab/chlorambucil vs chlorambucil. Both combination arms were
better than chlorambucil, but the obinutuzumab arm appeared to be
superior to the rituximab arm. Okay, that's nice, but why don't we use a
regimen in a study that's actually used to treat patients in this
country? Well, we'll see preliminary data from the GREEN trial, in which
there will be, as one of the arms, bendamustine and obinutuzumab. Let's
see what happens with that study.
The excitement continues to
mount for another class of drugs: the checkpoint inhibitors. There are
lots of these in clinical trials. We saw at the last ASH meeting some
astounding data with nivolumab in relapsed/refractory Hodgkin lymphoma
and with pembrolizumab in a similar population. We will see at this
meeting an update of those data. Do they really hold up over time? Let's
hope so.
Again, combinations are where it's at. There will be a
presentation on brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris®), the anti-CD30 antibody
drug conjugate, plus a checkpoint inhibitor in relapsed/refractory
Hodgkin's lymphoma. Those data will be of particular interest to me
because I'm getting ready to activate a study of brentuximab vedotin
plus nivolumab in patients with untreated Hodgkin disease. We'll also
see data on checkpoint inhibitors in the treatment of patients with that
really awful condition, Richter transformation.
I
hope to see you in Orlando. Perhaps you'll also see this friend of
mine. Excuse me while I move this camera. There he is. He's vacationing
for the winter there, so Mr Mick and I will be running into you down
there. Have a good ASH meeting, for those of you who go. For those of
you who don't, we'll have a wrap-up session with Medscape Hematology
afterwards.
Thank you very much. See you there. Bruce Cheson, signing off.
Monday, December 7, 2015
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment