Dr. Andreadis Discusses the Role of Ibrutinib in DLBCL

Charalambos (Babis) Andreadis, MD, MSCE, associate professor of clinical medicine, Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses the role of ibrutinib (Imbruvica) in the treatment of patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL).

Data from the phase III DBL3001 study showed that ibrutinib in combination with standard R-CHOP therapy missed the primary endpoint of event-free survival when used as a first-line therapy for patients with DLBCL. This study included 838 patients with newly diagnosed DLBCL who had either non-germinal center B cell (GCB) or activated B-cell (ABC) subtypes.

Andreadis says that ibrutinib still has a role in this disease. It is hard to show benefit in the first-line setting, as patients do so well on current standard of care treatment, he explained. The original data that showed that the ABC patients did worse than the GCB patients has not been the case in subsequent studies. Ibrutinib has a role in the second-line setting, Andreadis says, and as a single agent, it may be beneficial in relapsed/refractory patients with the ABC subtype.