BSH 2023 | PETReA: evaluating PET-adapted maintenance therapy approaches for patients with follicular lymphoma

So PETReA is another NCRI led clinical trial. This is a randomized Phase III clinical study in patients with newly diagnosed follicular lymphoma asking a PET adapted maintenance question. So, in this study, patients who’ve responded to permissive immunochemotherapy using either rituximab or obinutuzumab in combination with chemotherapy will then go on according to their PET results to be randomized. So, it’s asking the question of whether we can avoid maintenance rituximab in patients who achieve a PET negative response on the basis that these patients have a good prognosis and we know that the maintenance, which may not be improving their outcomes, may be adding toxicity. Of course we don’t want to increase toxicity unnecessarily and that’s been something that’s really come to the fore during the COVID-19 pandemic. Then the other arm of the study are the patients that have not achieved a complete response and we know that these patients do have an inferior survival. So, this is asking the question of whether our standard maintenance approach with two years of either rituximab or obinutuzumab maintenance is good enough, or whether we can improve outcomes by enhancing maintenance with the addition of lenalidomide. So, this is an ongoing study in the UK and Australia and soon to be other parts of the world and you know recruitment is going well, but we really do rely on our investigators to support this study. There are also a number of sub-studies to PETReA as well, addressing things like vaccine responses to the COVID-19 vaccinations, the information we provide patients, PET CT scans and so on. So, it’s a really good platform study for a number of other important questions in follicular lymphoma.