Tag: Dr. John Leonard

The Oncology Times reported on results from a small prospective, Phase II open label study published in Blood, that found brentuximab vedotin may be of use for elderly Hodgkin lymphoma patients, who cannot tolerate harsher chemotherapy treatment options. From the 19 patients the objective response rate was 92% with 73% of patients achieving a complete response rate and 19% a partial remission rate. First author, Dr. Andres-Forero-Torres MD reported:

“We took patients who were older than 60 and not candidates for chemotherapy due to comorbidities or who did not want to receive chemotherapy, and we treated them with brentuximab vedotin as a single agent…We were able to show in this small but significant population of patients that older patients tolerated brentuximab vendotin very nicely. We found very high rates of response–almost everybody had a response, and a very good percentage had a complete remission.”

Lymphoma Program Director, Dr. John Leonard commented on the results:

“The issue is that the standard therapies in elderly and frail patients do have significant toxicity, so trying to come up with something that has less toxicity, if it can also be effective, is valuable…Brentuximab vedotin has less toxicity against the lungs, which is an issue with bleomycin, and less in the way of low blood count which you have in standard chemotherapy. It also avoids the cardiac toxicity of standard treatment as well.

Currently there are two trials comparing brentuximab vedotin to other treatment regimens open at Weill Cornell Medicine. The first trial is open to patients with advanced classical Hodgkin lymphoma and the second trial is open to patients with CD-30-positive mature T-cell lymphomas.