Joe Schroers-Martin, MD, on Follicular Lymphoma: Precursor Mutations May Be Detectable Years Before Diagnosis
2021 ASH Annual Meeting & Exposition
Joe Schroers-Martin, MD, of Stanford University, discusses his latest study findings, which show that follicular lymphoma driver mutations are detectable in blood and saliva years prior to a clinical diagnosis. These data build on previous work and suggest that researchers may be able to stratify people at elevated risk of clinical malignancy (Abstract 709).
The ASCO Post Staff
Sangeetha Venugopal, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses a retrospective analysis of 562 patients with treated secondary acute myeloid leukemia and prior exposure to hypomethylating agents (HMAs). The results showed that an HMA plus venetoclax yielded significantly higher overall response rates and improved overall survival compared with intensive chemotherapy or low-intensity chemotherapy, particularly in patients 60 years or older who had a karyotype without adverse risk (Abstract 794).
The ASCO Post Staff
Leslie S. Kean, MD, PhD, of Dana-Farber/Boston Children's Cancer and Blood Disorders Center, discusses findings from her analysis of the International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research Database, which led to the recent FDA approval of abatacept for the prevention of acute graft-vs-host disease (GVHD) in adult and pediatric patients. The data suggest improved overall survival with the immunosuppressant abatacept in combination with a calcineurin inhibitor and methotrexate following 7/8 HLA–matched unrelated allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (Abstract 3912).
The ASCO Post Staff
Roni Shouval, MD, PhD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses his findings, which show, for the first time, that TP53 alterations are a valuable prognostic and potentially predictive marker in patients with large B-cell lymphoma who receive CD19–CAR T-cell therapy. Gene-expression profiling suggests that TP53 alterations result in an immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment and impaired apoptosis signaling, which could lead to decreased CAR T-cell therapy efficacy (Abstract 710).
The ASCO Post Staff
Musa Yilmaz, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses study results suggesting that quizartinib with decitabine and venetoclax is active in patients with FLT3-ITD–mutated acute myeloid leukemia and that RAS/MAPK mutations continue to drive primary and secondary resistance (Abstract 370).
The ASCO Post Staff
Tarek H. Mouhieddine, MD, of The Mount Sinai Hospital and The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, discusses data that suggest patients with heavily pretreated, predominantly triple-class refractory multiple myeloma who relapse after treatment with bispecific antibodies may still have good outcomes when sequentially treating with other immunologic treatments (Abstract 821).
