Nirav Niranjan Shah, MD, of the Medical College of Wisconsin, explores whether autologous transplantation, in patients with relapsed diffuse large B-cell lymphoma who achieve only a PET/CT-positive partial remission, is appropriate in the era of CAR T-cell therapy (Abstract 8000).
David C. Fajgenbaum, MD, MBA, of the University of Pennsylvania, who trained as an oncologist, summarizes his opening lecture, a dramatic story of his battle against Castleman, a disease of the lymph nodes, his multiple near-death experiences, and the path that led him to develop a cooperative research effort making a difference for him and other patients with this idiopathic orphan illness.
Mikkael A. Sekeres, MD, of the Cleveland Clinic, discusses data from a phase II study of pevonedistat plus azacitidine vs azacitidine alone in patients with higher-risk myelodysplastic syndromes, chronic myelomonocytic leukemia, or low-blast acute myeloid leukemia (Abstract 7506).
Lakshmi Nayak, MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, reviews two key abstracts on newly diagnosed primary central nervous system lymphoma and treatment with whole-brain radiotherapy, methotrexate, temozolomide, rituximab, procarbazine, vincristine, and cytarabine (Abstracts 2500 and 2501).
Farhad Ravandi-Kashani, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses updates from a phase I dose-escalation study of AMG 330, a bispecific T-cell engager molecule. It showed early evidence of an acceptable safety profile, drug tolerability, and antileukemic activity, supporting further dose escalation in patients with acute myeloid leukemia (Abstract 7508).
Meletios A. Dimopoulos, MD, of the University of Athens, discusses phase III results from the BOSTON trial, which showed that once-weekly selinexor, bortezomib, and dexamethasone significantly improved progression-free survival and overall response rates compared with twice-weekly bortezomib and dexamethasone in patients previously treated for multiple myeloma (Abstract 8501).
