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.
Nikhil C. Munshi, MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses initial results from the KarMMa tria, showing that idecabtagene vicleucel, a B-cell maturation antigen-targeted CAR T-cell therapy, demonstrated deep and durable responses in patients with heavily pretreated relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma. Efficacy and safety data support a favorable clinical benefit-risk profile across the target dose range (Abstract 8503).
Nancy U. Lin, MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses the HER2CLIMB study of patients with previously treated HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer that had metastasized to the brain. Adding tucatinib to trastuzumab and capecitabine doubled the intracranial response rate and reduced the risk of death by nearly half, compared with trastuzumab plus capecitabine (Abstract 1005).
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).
Sarah A. Holstein, MD, PhD, of the University of Nebraska Medical Center, discusses top myeloma abstracts from the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program: the ENDURANCE trial on carfilzomib, lenalidomide, dexamethasone, and bortezomib; the STaMINA study on transplantation strategies; a first-in-human study on the novel CELMoD agent CC-92480 plus dexamethasone; the CARTITUDE-1 trial on CAR T-cell therapy; and a phase I study of teclistamab (Abstracts LBA3, 8506, 8500, 8505, and 100).
