Dr. Goy on the Utility of NGS in Identifying Aggressive MCL Subtypes

Andre Goy, MD, MS, physician-in-chief of the Hackensack Meridian Health Oncology Care Transformation Service; chairman and executive director of John Theurer Cancer Center at Hackensack University Medical Center; Lydia Pfund chair for Lymphoma; chief of the Division of Lymphoma; professor of medicine at Georgetown University; and professor and chair of oncology at Seton Hall–Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine, discusses the utility of next-generation sequencing (NGS) in identifying aggressive subtypes of mantle cell lymphoma (MCL).

In MCL, there is a whole spectrum outside of the few patients who truly have indolent or aggressive disease, says Goy. In the middle of the spectrum, patients have disease that behaves very differently, according to Goy. A portion of patients with high-risk features, such as a p53 mutation, can be identified, adds Goy. Giving rituximab (Rituxan) and ibrutinib (Imbruvica) as a combination therapy and a shorter course of chemotherapy is very appealing for these patients, says Goy.

This is the first step for patients who are not candidates for high-dose therapy or dose-intensive therapy as a non-chemotherapy option. The treatment algorithm is shifting, says Goy. In MCL, subset after subset is being identified, allowing the field to truly define better treatment options for patients, concludes Goy.