ASCO 2016 | CLL therapy – current status and issues

John Pagel, MD, PhD of the Swedish Cancer Institute, Seattle, WA provides an overview of an educational session on the current issues in therapeutic endeavors for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) at the American Society of Oncology (ASCO) 2016 Annual Meeting held in Chicago, IL. The current status of CLL therapy was discussed with a focus on using different agents for different patients. For example, chemoimmunotherapy may not be appropriate for elderly or unfit patients but provides a major benefit for younger, fit patients in terms of long-term survival without additional therapy. For patients who cannot receive immunotherapy, the option of using drugs such as ibrutinib (a BTK inhibitor), idelalisib, acalabrutinib and TGR-1202 was discussed. According to Dr Pagel, there are open questions with regard to the use of these agents, such as length of therapy, whether therapy can be stopped and started again at a later stage and how and if to sequence these agents as well as how to overcome to resistance and Richter syndrome.