Dr. Ansell on PD-1 Inhibitors in Hodgkin Lymphoma

Stephen M. Ansell, MD, PhD, of Mayo Clinic, discusses the use of PD-1 inhibitors for patients with Hodgkin lymphoma.

The use of PD-1 blockade drugs, such as nivolumab (Opdivo) or pembrolizumab (Keytruda), have proven to be promising in patients who have failed multiple prior therapies. There is an overexpression of PD-L1, which allows these patients to benefit from PD-1 treatment.

The CheckMate-039 study focused on using nivolumab to treat patients who had failed on prior lines of therapy. There were many different cohorts in this study, but the Hodgkin lymphoma cohort did particularly well, Ansell explains.