Active Evaluations and Topics of Interest Within the MCL Treatment Landscape

Jia Ruan, MD, PhD, Weill Cornell Medicine, shares various active evaluations and topics of interest within the MCL treatment landscape, including the comparison between novel combinations versus traditional chemoimmunotherapy. 

Transcript:

Dr Ruan: This is Dr. Ruan. I'm a lymphoma physician at Weill Cornell, New York Presbyterian Hospital. 

Lymphoma, Leukemia & Myeloma Network: What are some areas of interest within the mantle cell lymphoma space that oncologists and researchers are frequently evaluating? 

Dr Ruan: Thank you for your question. I think the clinical research area in mantle cell lymphoma is very active and we have a lot of new agents. I think the treatment paradigm [is] being actively evaluated in both relapsed/refractory disease as well as frontline treatment. In the relapsed or refractory setting, the question is, are combination[s] better than single agent[s]? And, what are the more favorable combinations? What disease subgroups should they be tailored for? Essentially, we're looking at effectiveness.

We're also looking at potential mechanism[s] of effectiveness, resistance, and sensitivity. Those data will help us to determine how to bring them into earlier lines of therapy, such as frontline treatment.

I think within the frontline, one of the questions is how do the novel combination[s] compare with traditional chemoimmunotherapy in terms of side effects profiles, in terms of impact on people's quality of life, in terms of impact on duration of therapy? To help answer those questions we have tools to evaluate such as biomarkers for response [and] minimal residual disease.

Can we use a response to help tailor our treatment intensity, treatment duration, and the need for ongoing maintenance versus intermittent maintenance? I think our ongoing investigation on those topics will hopefully continue to make our treatment to be highly effective, minimize side effects, and perhaps shorten the duration so that our patient[s] could enjoy an even better quality of life.