John C. Byrd, MD, director of the division of hematology at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses the new and updated results of a phase Ib/II study involving ibrutinib at the American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition.

Ibrutinib is an oral inhibitor to Bruton’s Tyrosine Kinase (BTK) and was analyzed in patients with naïve and relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) or small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL).

The results from the study, Byrd says, have been exciting because there has been a high response rate in essentially all treated CLL groups in addition to being well tolerated. The trial found that, as a monotherapy, ibrutinib induces durable remissions in relapsed or refractory CLL patients including high-risk patients and in older treatment-naïve patients. Ibrutinib will be evaluated in these populations in a phase III trial.

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