Dr. Jain Discusses Unmet Needs in CLL, Richter's Transformation

Nitin Jain, MD, of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, joins Chadi Nabhan, MD, MBA, FACP, Host of The HemOnc Pulse, to discuss unmet needs and unanswered questions in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) at the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the Society of Hematologic Oncology.

One particular area of unmet clinical need in CLL is Richter’s transformation, which occurs in about 4% to 5% of patients, Dr. Jain said.

“The outcomes we have with chemotherapy, with venetoclax, with targeted therapies, with clinical trials … we are talking about less than one-year survival for these patients, unless they can get to transplant, which again (for [a] majority of these patients) [given] their age, commodities, lack of remission … they’re not able to get to transplant,” Dr. Jain explained.

He also spoke about ongoing clinical trials for this group of patients going on at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. He said among those trials are “novel” chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy strategies, and those with CD20 bispecifics.