Transcript
Hi, I'm Peter Martin. I'm the Chief of the Lymphoma Program at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York.
One of the drugs that was most recently approved for follicular lymphoma is called tazemetostat. Tazemetostat is an EZH2 inhibitor. EZH2 is a histone methyl transferase that is present in all follicular lymphoma cells.
We're moving into an era of precision medicine. We now have an approved drug that appears to target a mutation that's present in 20% of follicular lymphomas.
Should we be sequencing all of our follicular lymphomas for EZH2 mutation status? Should we be using the drug only in the mutant patients, where we know it's more likely to have a better response?
Is it OK to use it broadly, given that it's got a similar progression-free survival in both groups? Is it really a factor of just not having enough patients to determine those differences? Those are questions that remain to be seen.
It is an interesting drug that very significant immune-mediated, or interesting immune effects in the tumor microenvironment. It'll be interesting to see some of the research that is going to emerge over the next few years with the EZH2 inhibitors.
