Articles related to Hematology

It’s a battle of two heavyweights in this trial report from the Journal of Clinical Oncology, sharing the results of acalabrutinib (Calquence) compared to ibrutinib (Imbruvica) in treating chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). Selected events of clinical interest included cardiac events, atrial fibrillation, ventricular tachyarrhythmias, hypertension, bleeding and major bleeding events, infections, and second primary malignancies excluding non-melanoma skin cancers.

Despite the pandemic interrupting trials and drug development in 2020, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) claims it is “full speed ahead” on the approval of novel cancer drug therapies. The authors of this Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) study wanted to verify these remarks, reviewing the FDA Hematology/Oncology Approvals website to ascertain all hematology/oncology drugs approved in 2020.

In this article from Blood Advances highlighted by helpful visual abstracts, two key points are discussed. First, patient-specific next-generation sequencing (NGS)-based measurable residual disease (MRD) monitoring using non-DTA mutations after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (alloHCT) is independently prognostic for relapse and survival. Second, the kinetics rather than a single time point should be further evaluated when DTA mutations are used for MRD monitoring after alloHCT.

In this interview with Dr. Richard Furman, Professor of Medicine at New York-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medicine, the importance of the CLL14 study is highlighted. In addition, Dr. Furman discusses the best use of venetoclax and whether anti-CD20 agents really add to the benefit of venetoclax treatment and whether a policy of watch and wait is still beneficial for all patients. 

In this Original Report from the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the authors conducted a phase I trial of autologous CD19 CAR T cells in children and young adults (CAYAs) with relapsed or refractory B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL) to discover whether the role for allogeneic hematopoietic stem-cell transplant (alloHSCT) following CD19-CAR T-cell therapy can improve long-term outcomes.

Published in Blood, this article presents initial findings from a proof-of-concept study led by Martin Wermke, MD, from the Technical University of Dresden in Germany. The UniCAR platform uses targeting molecule TM123 and a single-chain variable fragment that is directed against the CD123 antigen, offering a potential new treatment option for patients with relapsed/refractory acute myeloid leukemia (AML).