What Is the Optimal Treatment Sequence for Relapsed or Refractory T-Cell Lymphoma?

From the Salvia Jain Lab at the Massachusetts General Hospital comes a novel PETAL Consortium study on sequencing and optimizing treatment for relapsed or refractory T-cell lymphoma.

Mark Sorial, PharmD, BCOP, a clinical pharmacist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital, recently stopped by Blood Cancers Today to share the results of the Consortium’s latest publication in the British Journal of Haematology.

“In T-cell lymphoma, there are not a lot of options. But after you’ve progressed on frontline treatment, there are a handful of available therapies we would use because it is either so aggressive and people relapse or they just don’t respond at all,” he explained. “They end up getting the same treatment, and the only difference between them is the order in which they receive the treatments. The question we tried to answer is, ‘Does that order matter?’”

Dr. Sorial and colleagues found that both epigenetic modifiers and small molecule inhibitors outperformed chemotherapy in the second-line setting. Furthermore, using small molecule inhibitors in the second-line followed by epigenetic modifiers in the third-line yielded the best survival results.

“Overall, it supports the messaging that we should be putting chemo away for these patients and that chemo’s not really effective in this disease state anymore,” Dr. Sorial explained. “Also, the survival benefit in the second-line setting supports the earlier use of these targeted therapies.”

Read More: Salvia Jain Lab’s PETAL Consortium Unveils Novel Scoring System for T-Cell Lymphoma