4 Recent FDA-Approved Blood Cancer Drugs That Patients May Have Missed

As we head into the summer months, certain patients with blood cancer have more treatment options than ever before, as CAR-T cell therapies and other drugs were recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In some cases, these approvals are offering better outcomes than years-old standards of care.

Spring 2022 brought in some landmark blood cancer approvals from the FDA. Here is a roundup of the therapies recently approved by the FDA that patients may have missed.

In case you missed it, here are four drugs that were approved in the hematologic cancer space in recent months:

• Breyanzi (lisocabtagene maraleucel) for patients with previously treated, relapsed/refractory large B-cell lymphoma. The approval of the CAR-T cell therapy, which was based off findings from two clinal trials, marks the first advancement in nearly 30 years for this patient population. Trial data showed that more than half (66%) of patients given Breyanzi experienced a complete response (no detectable evidence of disease after treatment), compared to 39% for those given standard of care.
• Kymriah (tisagenlecleucel) for relapsed/refractory follicular lymphoma that has been previously treated. Kymriah, another CAR-T cell therapy, was granted an accelerated approval in May, after clinical trial results showed that the drug was beneficial for this patient population. In particular, 86% of patients treated with Kymriah experienced disease shrinkage, with 68% experiencing a complete response.
• Tibsovo (ivosidenib tablets) plus Vidaza (azacitidine) for newly diagnosed IDH1-mutant acute myeloid leukemia in patients over the age of 75 who are not eligible for induction chemotherapy. According to findings from the AGILE clinical trial, which led to the drug duo’s FDA approval, adding Tibsovo to Vidaza improved the time patients lived after treatment (an average of 24 months), compared with placebo plus Vidaza (an average of 7.9 months).
• Vidaza for pediatric patients with newly diagnosed juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia. At the time of the approval, hematopoietic stem cell transplant was the only known successful treatment for juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia, a rare blood cancer in which certain white blood cells do not mature normally. In the trial leading to the drug’s approval, 94% of patients were able to go on to receive a stem cell transplant.

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