Jeffrey E. Rubnitz, MD, PhD, of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, discusses study findings suggesting that pharmacogenomic differences between Black and White patients should be considered when tailoring induction regimens to improve outcomes of all patients and bridge the racial disparity gap in acute myeloid leukemia treatment (Abstract 386).
Sarah C. Rutherford, MD, of Weill Cornell Medicine, discusses findings of the SWOG S1826 study, which showed nivolumab plus AVD (doxorubicin, vinblastine, and dacarbazine) improved progression-free and event-free survival and seemed to be better tolerated than brentuximab vedotin plus AVD in patients aged 60 and older with advanced-stage Hodgkin lymphoma (Abstract 181).
Jonathon B. Cohen, MD, of Winship Cancer Institute, Emory University, discusses safety and efficacy findings from the phase I/II BRUIN study. The trial found that pirtobrutinib continues to demonstrate durable efficacy and a favorable safety profile in heavily pretreated patients with relapsed or refractory mantle cell lymphoma (Abstract 981).
Mikkael A. Sekeres, MD, of the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, reviews key abstracts from ASH 2023 on treatment of myelofibrosis, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, large B-cell lymphoma, and acute myeloid leukemia (Abstracts 620, 631, 781, 425).
Hamish S. Scott, PhD, and Chris Hahn, PhD, both of Australia’s SA Pathology and Centre for Cancer, discuss ERG, a new predisposition gene for bone marrow failure and hematologic malignancy. Identifying causal germline ERG variants has direct clinical implications for diagnosis, counseling, surveillance, and treatment strategies, according to Drs. Scott and Hahn (Abstract LBA5).
Jennifer A. Woyach, MD, of The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses phase I/II findings of the BRUIN study on the use of pirtobrutinib after covalent Bruton’s tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitors in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia or small lymphocytic lymphoma (CLL/SLL). The results suggest that continuing BTK pathway inhibition following a covalent BTK inhibitor may be an important sequencing approach to consider in the treatment of CLL/SLL (Abstract 325).
