ERIC 2024 | The importance of measuring QoL outcomes in CLL clinical trials

Looking at the different treatment options today, we see excellent outcomes in terms of overall survival and even progression-free survival, even in the second-line setting. And at the same time, we have a multitude of different agents that we can combine in different ways to improve outcomes for our patients. That means that it’s not enough to consider just the duration of response. Also need to think about the toxicity, the adverse event profile of the different treatments and how that impacts quality of life for patients. Just coming out of a session on the patient journey for patients with CLL, trying to capture how the impression for patients of the disease and treatment impacting their life, how can we turn that into something we can measure in clinical trials. So we’re trying to do that by collecting information about quality of life but also adverse events in parallel for the clinical trials we’re running. So trying to emphasize that it’s not enough just to collect the information on remission or progression-free survival but at the same time identify the periods of time for the patient without severe adverse events and with an improved quality of life. And I think going forward that would be a combined outcome we need to pursue in clinical trials, the toxicity-free, progression-free survival rather than just the progression-free survival.