Hematology Commons^™

The Society For Immunotherapy Of Cancer (Sitc) Clinical Practice Guideline On Immunotherapy For The Treatment Of Acute Leukemia., Michael M Boyiadzis, Ivan Aksentijevich, Daniel A Arber, John Barrett, Renier J Brentjens, Jill Brufsky, Jorge Cortes, Marcos De Lima, Stephen J Forman, Ephraim J Fuchs, Linda J Fukas, Steven D Gore, Mark R Litzow, Jeffrey S Miller, John M Pagel, Edmund K Waller, Martin S Tallman

Articles, Abstracts, and Reports

Acute leukemia is a constellation of rapidly progressing diseases that affect a wide range of patients regardless of age or gender. Traditional treatment options for patients with acute leukemia include chemotherapy and hematopoietic cell transplantation. The advent of cancer immunotherapy has had a significant impact on acute leukemia treatment. Novel immunotherapeutic agents including antibody-drug conjugates, bispecific T cell engagers, and chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapies have efficacy and have recently been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of patients with acute leukemia. The Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) convened a panel of …

Safety And Activity Of Varlilumab, A Novel And First-In-Class Agonist Anti-Cd27 Antibody, For Hematologic Malignancies., Stephen M Ansell, Ian Flinn, Matthew H Taylor, Branimir I Sikic, Joshua Brody, John Nemunaitis, Andrew Feldman, Thomas R Hawthorne, Tracey Rawls, Tibor Keler, Michael J Yellin

Articles, Abstracts, and Reports

CD27, a costimulatory molecule on T cells, induces intracellular signals mediating cellular activation, proliferation, effector function, and cell survival on binding to its ligand, CD70. Varlilumab, a novel, first-in-class, agonist immunoglobulin G1 anti-CD27 antibody, mediates antitumor immunity and direct killing of CD27+ tumor cells in animal models. This first-in-human, dose-escalation, and expansion study evaluated varlilumab in patients with hematologic malignancies. Primary objectives were to assess safety and the maximum tolerated and optimal biologic doses of varlilumab. Secondary objectives were to evaluate pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, immunogenicity, and antitumor activity. In a 3 + 3 dose-escalation design, 30 patients with B-cell (n = …

A Phase 1/2 Study Of The Oral Flt3 Inhibitor Pexidartinib In Relapsed/Refractory Flt3-Itd-Mutant Acute Myeloid Leukemia., Catherine C Smith, Mark J Levis, Olga Frankfurt, John M Pagel, Gail J Roboz, Richard M Stone, Eunice S Wang, Paul L Severson, Brian L West, Mai H Le, Sabine Kayser, Bao Lam, Henry H Hsu, Chao Zhang, Gideon Bollag, Alexander E Perl

Articles, Abstracts, and Reports

FMS-like tyrosine kinase 3 (FLT3) tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) have activity in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients with FLT3 internal tandem duplication (ITD) mutations, but efficacy is limited by resistance-conferring kinase domain mutations. This phase 1/2 study evaluated the safety, tolerability, and efficacy of the oral FLT3 inhibitor PLX3397 (pexidartinib), which has activity against the FLT3 TKI-resistant F691L gatekeeper mutation in relapsed/refractory FLT3-ITD-mutant AML. Ninety patients were treated: 34 in dose escalation (part 1) and 56 in dose expansion (part 2). Doses of 800 to 5000 mg per day in divided doses were tested. No maximally tolerated dose was reached. …

Blood Test Shows High Accuracy In Detecting Stage I Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer., Cherylle Goebel, Christopher L Louden, Robert Mckenna, Osita Onugha, Andrew Wachtel, Thomas Long

Articles, Abstracts, and Reports

BACKGROUND: In a previous study (Goebel et. al, Cancer Genomics Proteomics 16:229-244, 2019), we identified 33 biomarkers for an early stage (I-II) Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC) test with 90% accuracy, 80.3% sensitivity, and 95.4% specificity. For the current study, we used a narrowed ensemble of 21 biomarkers while retaining similar accuracy in detecting early stage lung cancer.

METHODS: A multiplex platform, 486 human plasma samples, and 21 biomarkers were used to develop and validate our algorithm which detects early stage NSCLC. The training set consisted of 258 human plasma with 79 Stage I-II NSCLC samples. The 21 biomarkers with …

The Impact Of Age On Survival In Cll Patients Receiving Ibrutinib As Initial Therapy., Chaitra Ujjani, Anthony Mato, Brian T Hill, John N Allan, Frederick Lansigan, Ryan Jacobs, Alan Skarbnik, Hande Tuncer, John M Pagel, Danielle Brander, Bruce Cheson, Paul Barr, Lindsey E Roeker, Jeffrey Pu, Nirav N Shah, Andre Goy, Stephen J Schuster, Nicole Lamanna, Alison Sehgal, Constantine S Tam, Mazyar Shadman

Articles, Abstracts, and Reports

Introduction: Recent randomized trials have demonstrated the efficacy of ibrutinib-based therapy in the treatment of patients with CLL. In Alliance A041202, a higher than expected number of unexplained deaths were reported with front-line ibrutinib in a patient population aged at least 65 years compared to ECOG 1912, which included patients up to 70 years of age.

Methods: Therefore, we conducted a retrospective analysis to investigate whether ibrutinib was associated with a greater mortality in older patients outside of a clinical trial setting. This multicenter analysis was performed by investigators at 20 academic and community practices.

Results: Amongst the 391 patients …

Advances In Targeted Therapy For Acute Myeloid Leukemia., Jifeng Yu, Peter Y Z Jiang, Hao Sun, Xia Zhang, Zhongxing Jiang, Yingmei Li, Yongping Song

Articles, Abstracts, and Reports

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a clonal malignancy characterized by genetic heterogeneity due to recurrent gene mutations. Treatment with cytotoxic chemotherapy has been the standard of care for more than half of a century. Although much progress has been made toward improving treatment related mortality rate in the past few decades, long term overall survival has stagnated. Exciting developments of gene mutation-targeted therapeutic agents are now changing the landscape in AML treatment. New agents offer more clinical options for patients and also confer a more promising outcome. Since Midostaurin, a FLT3 inhibitor, was first approved by US FDA in 2017 …

Acalabrutinib Monotherapy In Patients With Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia Who Are Intolerant To Ibrutinib., Farrukh T Awan, Anna Schuh, Jennifer R Brown, Richard R Furman, John M Pagel, Peter Hillmen, Deborah M Stephens, Jennifer Woyach, Elena Bibikova, Prista Charuworn, Melanie M Frigault, Ahmed Hamdy, Raquel Izumi, Bolan Linghu, Priti Patel, Min Hui Wang, John C Byrd

Articles, Abstracts, and Reports

The Bruton tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitor ibrutinib improves patient outcomes in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL); however, some patients experience adverse events (AEs) leading to discontinuation. Acalabrutinib is a potent, covalent BTK inhibitor with greater selectivity than ibrutinib. We evaluated the safety and efficacy of 100 mg of acalabrutinib twice daily or 200 mg once daily in patients with CLL who discontinued ibrutinib because of intolerance as determined by the investigators. Among 33 treated patients (61% men; median age, 64 years; range, 50-82 years), median duration of prior ibrutinib treatment was 11.6 months (range, 1-62 months); median time from ibrutinib discontinuation …

Lenalidomide Consolidation Benefits Patients With Cll Receiving Chemoimmunotherapy: Results For Calgb 10404 (Alliance)., John C Byrd, Amy S Ruppert, Nyla A Heerema, Alese E Halvorson, Eva Hoke, Mitchell R Smith, John E Godwin, Stephen Couban, Todd A Fehniger, Michael J Thirman, Martin S Tallman, Frederick R Appelbaum, Richard M Stone, Sue Robinson, Julie E Chang, Sumithra J Mandrekar, Richard A Larson

Articles, Abstracts, and Reports

Prior to novel targeted agents for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), the best chemoimmunotherapy regimen in patients with non-del(11q) disease was unclear. The role of lenalidomide was also not defined. This phase 2 study randomized 342 untreated patients with non-del(11q) CLL requiring therapy to fludarabine plus rituximab (FR; n = 123), FR plus lenalidomide consolidation (FR+L; n = 109), or FR plus cyclophosphamide (FCR; n = 110) and compared 2-year progression-free survival (PFS) rates of each to the historical control rate with FC (60%). Patients with del(11q) in at least 20% of pretreatment cells continued with FCR (n = 27) or …

Longitudinal Peripheral Blood Transcriptional Analysis Of A Patient With Severe Ebola Virus Disease., John C Kash, Kathie-Anne Walters, Jason Kindrachuk, David Baxter, Kelsey Scherler, Krisztina B Janosko, Rick D Adams, Andrew S Herbert, Rebekah M James, Spencer W Stonier, Matthew J Memoli, John M Dye, Richard T Davey, Daniel S Chertow, Jeffery K Taubenberger

Articles, Abstracts, and Reports

The 2013-2015 outbreak of Ebola virus disease in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone was unprecedented in the number of documented cases, but there have been few published reports on immune responses in clinical cases and their relationships with the course of illness and severity of Ebola virus disease. Symptoms of Ebola virus disease can include severe headache, myalgia, asthenia, fever, fatigue, diarrhea, vomiting, abdominal pain, and hemorrhage. Although experimental treatments are in development, there are no current U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved vaccines or therapies. We report a detailed study of host gene expression as measured by microarray in daily …

A Journey Of Educational Transformation And Organizational Improvement Through Development Of An Institutional Patient Blood Management Program, Robert Raggi, Karen Klein, Marci Swearingen, Mark Domantay

Articles, Abstracts, and Reports

Providence Holy Cross Medical Center (PHCMC) has embarked on this journey to improve outcomes by reducing the number of unnecessary transfusions through the development of a PBM program. Transfusion-related health risks and increasing economic pressures have driven hospitals to recognize development of blood management programs as an important strategy to improve patient outcomes and reduce costs.