ICML 2017 | Overview of the GALLIUM study

Wolfgang Hiddeman, MD, PhD, from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Munich, Germany, provides an overview of his talk, ‘Immunochemotherapy with obinutuzumab or rituximab in previously untreated follicular lymphoma in the randomised phase III GALLIUM study: analysis by chemotherapy regimen’ at the International Conference on Malignant Lymphoma (ICML) 2017 in Lugano, Switzerland. The GALLIUM study (NCT01332968) was a comparison of a chemotherapy, CHOP, bendamustine, or CVP, combined obinutuzumab (G) or rituximab (R). The chemotherapy was not assigned to patients randomly, which lead to an imbalance of patient characteristics, such as age and high risk FLIPI and bulky disease patients. The results were therefore analysed with caution. Complete remission was found in patients treated with bendamustine and CHOP, however, a higher number of patients treated with bendamustine did not survive, with minor differences between G and R. There were more severe side effects in G CHOP treated patients, such as neutropenia and infections.There was a significantly higher rate of infections in patients treated with bendamustine, due to decreased T-cell counts. This was not seen in CHOP or CVP treated patients. Obinutuzumab was found to be superior with all three chemotherapies, however, he does state that bendamustine must be prescribed with caution.