Dr. Goy on Immunotherapy in Mantle Cell Lymphoma

Andre Goy, MD, MS, chief, Division of Lymphoma, chairman and director, John Theurer Cancer Center, discusses the potential of immunotherapy in patients with mantle cell lymphoma (MCL).

Lenalidomide (Revlimid) and rituximab (Rituxan; R2) plus ibrutinib (Imbruvica) is a combination approach of immunotherapy and targeted therapy, explains Goy. At John Theurer Cancer Center, 71% of heavily pretreated patients with MCL experienced a complete response with the regimen. Additionally, a published study showed high response rates in patients with poor genetic risk factors.

Traditionally, when physicians think about immunotherapy, they think about chimeric antigen receptor T cells, says Goy. However, a lot remains unknown about the use of checkpoint inhibitors in MCL. Activity outside of primary mediastinal lymphoma and Hodgkin lymphoma has been relatively disappointing, explains Goy. However, there is a lot of potential with anti—CD47 antibodies that may enable physicians to give patients a biological induction, and subsequently consider immunotherapy in high-risk patients.