Follicular Lymphoma Treatment Could Rely on Immunotherapy in Therapy Sequencing

When it comes to treating follicular lymphoma, future treatment paradigms may involve harnessing a patient’s immune system to help fight cancer, according to one expert.

OncLive®, CURE®’s sister publication, recently spoke with Dr. Connie L. Batlevi, a medical oncologist specializing in lymphoma at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, about the follicular lymphoma treatment landscape and adding immunotherapy to it, which has shown encouraging data of late.

In particular, Batlevi said, using the patient’s immune system to modulate the disease is of interest to clinicians. Current studies are also looking at the efficacy of CAR-T cell therapy, antibody​-drug conjugates, and bispecific antibodies, Batlevi said. Future research should also work on identifying the right sequence of therapies is going to be key for patients, she concludes.

Transcription:

So, in terms of novel treatments and combinations of treatments that are coming down the pipeline, I think the things are of interest are sort of using the immune system to modulate the disease course of follicular lymphoma. We have seen promising data for chimeric antigen receptor T-cells in follicular lymphoma. CAR-T cells, we've also seen some interesting data using antibody drug conjugates. We are looking at the data for specific antibodies for follicular lymphoma.

And (while) all of those are very intriguing, how to put them in context and how to how to strategize or the sequencing of those for our patients will be important in the next several years.

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