Tag: lymphoma cancer

Dr. John Leonard Comments on the Use of Brentuximab Vedotin as a Monotherapy for Elderly Hodgkin Lymphoma Patients

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.

Researchers Develop New Method to Test Lymphoma Treatments

Researchers from Cornell Ithaca and Weill Cornell Medicine recently published a new study describing how organoids offer a realistic model to test new lymphoma treatments. A organoid is a tissue culture that mimics the environment where different lymphomas are found. The use of organoids could offer insights as to why some lymphoma treatments are more effective than others. As Dr. Ari Melnick explained:

“This is a game-changing technology for the field of lymphoma,” Melnick said. “These organoids allow us to better understand the complex architecture of lymphomas and how that informs the way we treat the disease – what drugs we should use and for whom, and how they interact with each other. This is a fundamental advance; no one in the world has the technology to treat patients in this way.” 

Research into lymphoma organoids are part of the P.A.Th. (Progressive Assessment of Therapeutics) program, an inter-campus collaboration between Cornell Ithaca and Weill Cornell Medicine that seeks to better translate the treatment of lymphoma patients.

Q & A with Dr. Peter Martin on High Dose Cytarabine for Mantle Cell Lymphoma Patients

In a recent interview with Clinical Advances in Hematology & Oncology, Dr. Peter Martin answered questions about the use of high dose cytarabine for patients with mantle cell lymphoma.

H&O How much does high-dose cytarabine improve patient outcome?

PM I do not think that has been very well defined. Not all of these data have sufficient long-term follow-up to comment on overall survival outcomes. Historically, patients were given R-CHOP followed by ASCT. The MCL-2 trial, published by Geisler and colleagues, added high-dose cytarabine and rituximab, and found that the outcomes were far superior in terms of progression-free survival and overall survival. However, these outcomes may not be solely due to high-dose cytarabine. Other explanations include the addition of rituximab, other changes in supportive care, and better pathology. Cytarabine may be part of that story, but it may not be the whole story.

The better trial to evaluate the potential role of cytarabine is the MCL Younger Trial that I mentioned earlier, which is a phase 3 trial published by Hermine and colleagues that compared 6 cycles of R-CHOP vs the R-CHOP/R-DHAP regimen. In this trial, the addition of R-DHAP seemed to reduce the risk of disease progression by approximately 30%. The study also found that the R-CHOP/R-DHAP regimen prepared people for ASCT better than R-CHOP alone.

A transcript of the full interview can be read here.