iwCLL 2025 | The potential role of therapies targeting surface antigens in the CLL treatment landscape

I think when you’re thinking about targeting surface antigens, again, we’ve seen from the CD20 monoclonal experience that really combinations with other therapies have resulted in kind of the best benefit to patients. Of course, they’re used for things like concomitant autoimmune cytopenias, but when you’re looking at really improving progression-free survival, it’s kind of added to other therapies. So I think as we explore new targets, certainly making sure we know which therapies are best to combine them with. As we’ve seen, rituximab added early into ibrutinib treatment in a randomized Phase III trial did not improve the progression-free survival compared to ibrutinib alone. And that’s, of course, different than what we’ve seen with acalabrutinib or obinutuzumab in patients without deletion 17p. So I think you do have to make sure we know what the added benefits of like a surface antigen targeting strategy or monoclonal strategy is. But I really see that this continuing to be a combination with other like rational therapies. And I do really hope that we continue to look at use of some of these antibodies kind of later into treatment when disease burden is lower. Also, you know, there are some talks about how the immune system is also different as disease burden is left so that might actually be a time when the immune system might more effectively use something like a monoclonal antibody or a bispecific and we’ll just have to see how that plays out. But I think different targets, combinations and kind of exploring the timing of when to give them, you know, I think will really be a way that we advance the field in terms of targeting surface antigens.

This transcript is AI-generated. While we strive for accuracy, please verify this copy with the video.