Hematologic Oncology

Anjali Advani, MD ,staff physician, Department of Hematologic Oncology and Blood Disorders, Director, Inpatient Leukemia Program, Taussig Cancer Institute, associate professor, Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University, compares inotuzumab ozogamicin, a CD22 monoclonal antibody, to blinatumomab, a CD19 bi-specific anti-CD19/CD3 antibody for the treatment of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).

Hagop M. Kantarjian, MD, has built the nation's largest clinical leukemia practice, in part to ensure that leukemia studies are completed efficiently and in a timely manner.

At 5:45 am, the alarm on my phone goes off. I have 20 minutes until my 2 boys wake up, which is just enough time to get ready for work and fix myself a cup of coffee.

Newer drugs for patients with relapsed and refractory Hodgkin lymphoma

Rituximab dose should be based on age and sex.

When Vincent T. DeVita Jr, MD, began testing a cocktail of four chemotherapies against advanced Hodgkin disease back in 1964, the disease was uniformly fatal.

Cancers arise from multiple acquired mutations that presumably occur over many years, as shown in a number of models, particularly in colon cancer.

Ann LaCasce, MD, a lymphoma specialist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, discusses the use of brentuximab vedotin and bendamustine in combination for the treatment of patients with relapsed or refractory Hodgkin lymphoma.

Jae H. Park, MD, attending physician, Leukemia Service, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses a trial presented at the 2014 ASH Annual Meeting that explored CD19-targeted T cells as treatment for patients with relapsed, refractory B- cell ALL.

Duvelisib (IPI-145), an inhibitor of PI3K-δ and PI3K-γ signaling, had a favorable risk:benefit profile in patients with relapsed/refractory indolent non-Hodgkin lymphoma (iNHL) in a phase I study, reported Ian Flinn, MD, PhD

Treatment with the TKI sorafenib in combination with standard chemotherapy increased event-free survival by 11.3 months compared with standard chemotherapy plus placebo in patients with newly diagnosed acute myeloid leukemia.

Some patients with heavily treated acute myelogenous leukemia benefited from treatment with the BCL-2 inhibitor venetoclax (ABT-199).

Almost 90% of patients with relapsed or refractory mantle cell lymphoma responded to the targeted combination of ibrutinib and rituximab.

Patients with HIV-associated lymphoma can effectively be treated with autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, with outcomes that are similar to patients without HIV.

Treatment with nilotinib in combination with chemotherapy elicited complete hematological remissions in 87% of elderly patients with newly diagnosed Philadelphia-positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

The novel drug AG-221 generated durable remissions in patients with AML by targeting a mutation of the IDH2 gene in a small, first-in-man study that represents a new, chemotherapy-free approach for attacking the malignancy.

The anti-CD19 chimeric antigen receptor-modified T-cell therapy CTL019 demonstrated an impressive 92% complete response rate in pediatric patients with relapsed/refractory acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

Farhad Ravandi, MD, from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, describes results from the phase III VALOR trial that explored vosaroxin plus cytarabine versus placebo and cytarabine in patients with first relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia.