ASCO 2025 | Promising approaches being explored in BPDCN: targeting CD123, BCL2, combination therapies & more
In this video, Naveen Pemmaraju, MD, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, shares insight into three exciting areas of investigation in the field of blastic plasmacytoid dendritic cell neoplasm (BPDCN), including CD123-targeting agents, BCL2 inhibition, and combination therapy approaches. Dr Pemmaraju also briefly mentions the importance of managing central nervous system disease, which can occur in patients with BPDCN. This interview took place during the 2025 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Meeting in Chicago, IL.
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Transcript
So keeping on the theme of BPDCN, the excitement is building in our young emerging field. It was just not that long ago where people couldn’t pronounce the name of our disease or had never really heard of it, so I’m proud of the international efforts of our community to put BPDCN on the map.
With that, I think I would break it down into three exciting areas...
So keeping on the theme of BPDCN, the excitement is building in our young emerging field. It was just not that long ago where people couldn’t pronounce the name of our disease or had never really heard of it, so I’m proud of the international efforts of our community to put BPDCN on the map.
With that, I think I would break it down into three exciting areas. As you’re seeing here at ASCO from my group and others is targeting CD123. So after the tagraxofusp agent, which is already approved, and the one in the later stage development that we’re also presenting here, the pivekimab sunirine, I look forward to seeing other CD123 targeted agents developing in all the different ways possible: CAR T-cells, bispecific and monoclonal antibodies, you name it.
A second area is beyond CD123. Our group and others have shown the activity of targeting BCL2, and so that has opened up a brand new pathway in BPDCN, and our group has published widely on that.
And then finally, beyond even CD123 and BCL2 is combinations. So we’ve only been talking about monotherapy this time, but I’m quite excited about the prospect of combination therapies. And we have several of those trials ongoing. They’re publicly available, registered on clinicaltrials.gov. And the concept there is, can you take multiple of these pathways? So one clinical trial we have, for example, is combining CD123, hypomethylating agent, and BCL2 targeting. Yet another one is CD123, cytotoxic chemotherapy and BCL2 targeting. So you’re starting to see those combinations. And finally, we need to think about central nervous system disease treatment and penetration because this rare tumor, BPDCN, unfortunately has a predilection for central nervous system involvement so we need to be targeting that as well.
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