Dr. Goy on Combination Therapies in Mantle Cell Lymphoma

Andre Goy, MD, MS, chairman and director, chief of Lymphoma, and director of Clinical and Translational Cancer Research at John Theurer Cancer Center, discusses combination therapies currently being explored in the treatment of patients with mantle cell lymphoma (MCL).

Goy discusses a phase II single-center study, which consisted of an initial chemotherapy-free phase of ibrutinib (Imbruvica) and rituximab (Rituxan) combination treatment until best response, followed by a shortened course of intense chemo-immunotherapy among young, newly diagnosed patients with MCL who were aged ≤65 years. This is an opportunity for these patients, he says, to experience less toxicity compared with other treatment options. The preliminary data were quite promising, as the ibrutinib/rituximab combination was well-tolerated and efficacious for these patients.

Other combination regimens, explains Goy, are trying to integrate novel therapies into the current backbone of MCL for patients who can’t receive high-dose therapy.

Goy says there is still plenty of work to be done in this space, as most data show that the median overall survival for patients with MCL is approximately 2 to 2 and a half years. In the relapsed/refractory setting, he says there are some provocative data, including a study of a combination of rituximab, lenalidomide (Revlimid), and ibrutinib, where the response rate was over 85% and complete remission was 41%.