Farhad Ravandi, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, offers his expert perspective on key treatment studies in acute myeloid leukemia on the use of gilteritinib, consolidation chemotherapy, venetoclax, cladribine, azacitidine, quizartinib, decitabine, and CPX-351 (Session 616 [Abstracts 24- 29]).
Nitin Jain, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, reviews six important abstracts on CAR T-cell treatments for B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL): successful 24-hour manufacture of CAR T-cell therapy; ALLCAR19, a novel fast-off rate therapy; donor-derived CD19-targeted treatment; CAR 2.0 therapy to manage post-transplant relapse; UCART22, allogeneic engineered T cells expressing anti-CD22 chimeric antigen receptor; and inotuzumab ozogamicin in pediatric CD-22–positive disease (Session 614, Abstracts 159-164).
Sara Zarnegar-Lumley, MD, of Vanderbilt University Medical Center, discusses an analysis of a large cohort confirming the age-associated prevalence of IDH mutations in patients, across the age spectrum, with acute myeloid leukemia and therapeutic implications. IDH-mutated genes were found to co-occur frequently with other mutations, some of which favorably impact outcomes in patients younger than 60 (Abstract 388).
David T. Teachey, MD, of the University of Pennsylvania and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, discusses data showing that cranial radiation might be eliminated in most children with T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia and that bortezomib may improve survival in children with T-cell lymphoblastic lymphoma (Abstract 266).
Smita Bhatia, MD, MPH, and Radhika Gangaraju, MD, both of the Institute for Cancer Outcomes and Survivorship, University of Alabama at Birmingham, discuss findings that showed survivors of bone marrow transplants are at a 7- to 12-fold higher risk of coronary heart disease than a sibling comparison group. They recommend aggressive management of cardiovascular risk factors to prevent morbidity from heart disease in this patient population (Abstract 73).
Emmanuel Bachy, MD, PhD, of the Hospices Civils de Lyon, discusses the final analysis of a phase III study of adding romidepsin to chemotherapy in patients with previously untreated peripheral T-cell lymphoma. Adding romidepsin did not improve progression-free survival and was associated with high rates of adverse events (Abstract 39).
