Transcript
Hi. My name is Michael Choi. I'm an Associate Clinical Professor at the UC San Diego School of Medicine.
I presented updates on novel therapeutic approaches for treating our patients with CLL or SLL. We talked about recent drug approvals, specifically, the drug acalabrutinib, which is now another option for patients to receive BTK-inhibitor therapy.
We discussed at least an early signal that there may be less cardiovascular side effects with this drug, less atrial fibrillation, and less hypertension but also a lack of direct comparative data between this and ibrutinib. Certainly, nice to have another drug option for our patients.
Also discussed really new and emerging data combining our multiple novel therapies, trials combining ibrutinib and venetoclax and then 3 drug trials combining ibrutinib, venetoclax, and obinutuzumab or acalabrutinib, venetoclax, and obinutuzumab.
While these are not yet new standards of care, these trials have shown really high response rates, a high proportion of patients having undetectable residual disease and, I think, an expectation that these patients will be able to have significant times, via treatment-free remissions. These may become our next standards of care.
Of course, before we get to the point of declaring this a standard of care, randomized trial data is necessary. The main US intergroup trials running now are doing just that, looking at ibrutinib, obinutuzumab, with or without the addition of venetoclax.
Certainly, like I said, a lot of optimism that we can really have the best of that ideal treatment regimen that's tolerable, defined treatment duration, and leads to long remissions.
Of course, our current therapies aren't perfect. We still, unfortunately, have patients that have to stop them due to side effects or due to resistance.
There are, fortunately, many trials in progress looking at novel BTK inhibitors, reversible BTK inhibitors, PI3K inhibitors, and altogether new drug targets that, I think, we'll hopefully find to be safe and effective, even for our patients with the worst prognoses.
