Armin Ghobadi, MD, on Recent Advancements in the Treatment of Patients with DLBCL

In an interview with CancerNetwork®, Armin Ghobadi, MD, of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, explained some of the exciting advances in the treatment of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) and hypothesized what’s to come following the 2020 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition.

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There have been a lot of advances in treatment of DLBCL, including multiple T-cell engagers and CAR [chimeric antigen receptor] T-cell [therapies] going after CD19, [CD]20, or other targets. The research in this field is expanding rapidly and dramatically.

Even when you use CAR T-cell therapy—that’s the most effective treatment for relapsed/refractory DLBCL—long-term survival, at least 2 to 3 years disease-free survival [rates are] 35% to 40%. And those patients that relapse don’t have good options. There is still a need for improvement there, especially combining these interesting modalities the same way that we combined CHOP [cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, and prednisone], to come up with a good strategy to cure patients with DLBCL. Combining these newer modalities of T-cell engagers, CAR T-cell [therapies], antibodies drug conjugates, and those kinds of things all together early on for patients that did relapse early [may be necessary] to cure more patients.