A study signed by Dr. Carolina Moreno, researcher at the IIB Sant Pau of the Oncological Hematology and Transplant Group, and consultant at the Hospital’s Hematology Service, has recently been published in the scientific journal The Lancet Oncology. The work compares the standard treatment of Chronic Lymphatic Leukaemia in patients over 65 years of age (chemoimmunotherapy) with a treatment that incorporates Bruton tyrosine kinase inhibitors (ibutrinib) and demonstrates a clear benefit in terms of duration of response, as well as a reduction of the risk of disease progression by 80%. In patients who suffer a genetic alteration that predisposes to a poor response to standard treatment, the risk reduction is 85%.
The standard treatment for patients over the age of 65 suffering from Chronic Lymphatic Leukaemia (CLL), the most prevalent in Western countries, is so far chemotherapy with Chlorambucil in combination with a monoclonal anti-CD20 antibody obinotuzumab. In recent years there have been great advances in this disease with the introduction of new biological treatments targeting specific targets such as the Bruton tyrosine kinase inhibitor (Ibrutinib). The Illuminate study compares standard treatment with chemoimmunotherapy versus combination of ibrutinib with obinotuzumab in patients with CLL over 65 or with previously untreated comorbidities.
With conventional treatment the average duration of response is 19 months, while with this new combination, after 31 months, most patients maintain the response.
The drug combination proposed in the study is pending approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and is expected to be approved and available in the United States in the first half of 2019. In Europe, it is expected to be on the market by the end of this year.
Dr. Moreno, a researcher at the IIB Sant Pau and a consultant with the Hospital’s Haematology Service, presented the results of the study at the latest congress of the American Society of Haematology (ASH) held in San Diego and is the first signatory to the study recently published in The Lancet Oncology. Her presentation was the most viewed online of all those presented at this conference.
Sant Pau is the center that has recruited more patients in the study in which also participate more than 25 centers around the world.
Estudy: Lancet Oncol. 2018 Nov 30. pii: S1470-2045(18)30788-5. doi: 10.1016/S1470-2045(18)30788-5. [Epub ahead of print]
Signants: Moreno C, Greil R, Demirkan F, Tedeschi A, Anz B, Larratt L, Simkovic M, Samoilova O, Novak J, Ben-Yehuda D, Strugov V, Gill D, Gribben JG, Hsu E, Lih CJ, Zhou C, Clow F, James DF, Styles L, Flinn IW.
