1. Academic Validation
  2. Polatuzumab vedotin as a salvage and bridging treatment in relapsed or refractory large B-cell lymphomas

Polatuzumab vedotin as a salvage and bridging treatment in relapsed or refractory large B-cell lymphomas

  • Blood Adv. 2021 Jul 13;5(13):2707-2716. doi: 10.1182/bloodadvances.2020004155.
Nora Liebers 1 2 Johannes Duell 3 Donnacha Fitzgerald 1 4 Andrea Kerkhoff 5 Daniel Noerenberg 6 Eva Kaebisch 6 Fabian Acker 7 Stephan Fuhrmann 8 Corinna Leng 9 Manfred Welslau 10 Jens Chemnitz 11 Jan-Moritz Middeke 12 Thomas Weber 13 Udo Holtick 14 Ralf Trappe 15 Roald Pfannes 16 Ruediger Liersch 17 Christian Spoer 18 Stefan Fuxius 19 Niklas Gebauer 20 Léandra Caillé 1 Thomas Geer 21 Christian Koenecke 22 Ulrich Keller 9 Rainer Claus 23 Dimitrios Mougiakakos 24 Stephanie Mayer 25 Andreas Huettmann 26 Christiane Pott 27 Arne Trummer 28 Gerald Wulf 29 Uta Brunnberg 7 Lars Bullinger 6 Georg Hess 30 Carsten Mueller-Tidow 1 2 Bertram Glass 8 Georg Lenz 5 Peter Dreger 1 Sascha Dietrich 1 2 4
Affiliations

Affiliations

  • 1 Department of Medicine V, Heidelberg University Hospital, Heidelberg, Germany.
  • 2 National Center for Tumor Diseases Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany.
  • 3 Department of Internal Medicine II, Würzburg University Hospital, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany.
  • 4 European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Heidelberg, Germany.
  • 5 Department of Medicine A, University Hospital Münster, Münster, Germany.
  • 6 Department of Hematology, Oncology and Tumor Immunology (Campus Virchow-Klinikum), Charité University Medicine, Berlin, Germany.
  • 7 Department of Medicine 2, Hematology and Oncology, University Hospital Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany.
  • 8 Department of Hematology, HELIOS Klinikum Berlin-Buch, Berlin, Germany.
  • 9 Department of Hematology, Oncology, and Tumor Immunology (Campus Benjamin Franklin), Charité University Medicine, Berlin, Germany.
  • 10 MVZ am Klinikum Aschaffenburg, Onkologie und Hämatologie, Aschaffenburg, Germany.
  • 11 Gemeinschaftsklinikum Mittelrhein GmbH, Koblenz, Germany.
  • 12 University Hospital Dresden, Dresden, Germany.
  • 13 Department of Medicine IV, Hematology and Oncology, University of Halle, Halle, Germany.
  • 14 Department I of Internal Medicine, Medical Faculty and University Hospital, Cologne, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
  • 15 Department of Hematology and Oncology, DIAKO Ev. Diakonie-Krankenhaus Bremen, Bremen, Germany.
  • 16 Department of Medicine I, Städtisches Klinikum Dessau, Dessau, Germany.
  • 17 Praxis Medical Center, Gemeinschaftspraxis für Hämatologie und Onkologie Münster, Münster, Germany.
  • 18 MVZ am EVK Düsseldorf, Internistische Onkologie und Hämatologie, Düsseldorf, Germany.
  • 19 Onkologische Schwerpunktpraxis Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany.
  • 20 Department of Haematology and Oncology, University Hospital of Schleswig-Holstein, Campus Lübeck, Germany.
  • 21 Diakonie Klinikum Schwäbisch-Hall, Innere Medizin III, Schwäbisch Hall, Germany.
  • 22 Department of Hematology, Hemostasis, Oncology and Stem Cell Transplantation, Hannover Medical School, Hannover, Germany.
  • 23 Hematology and Oncology, Medical Faculty, University of Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany.
  • 24 Department of Internal Medicine 5, Hematology and Clinical Oncology, Friedrich-Alexander University (FAU) of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany.
  • 25 Department of Internal Medicine III, University Hospital of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany.
  • 26 Department of Hematology, University Hospital of Essen, Essen, Germany.
  • 27 Second Medical Department, University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein, Campus Kiel, Germany.
  • 28 Department of Hematology and Oncology, Klinikum Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany.
  • 29 Clinic for Hematology and Medical Oncology, University Medicine Göttingen, Germany; and.
  • 30 Department of Hematology, Oncology and Pneumology, Johannes Gutenberg-University, Mainz, Germany.
Abstract

The antibody-drug conjugate polatuzumab vedotin (pola) has recently been approved in combination with bendamustine and rituximab (pola-BR) for patients with refractory or relapsed (r/r) large B-cell lymphoma (LBCL). To investigate the efficacy of pola-BR in a real-world setting, we retrospectively analyzed 105 patients with LBCL who were treated in 26 German centers under the national compassionate use program. Fifty-four patients received pola as a salvage treatment and 51 patients were treated with pola with the intention to bridge to chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy (n = 41) or allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (n = 10). Notably, patients in the salvage and bridging cohort had received a median of 3 prior treatment lines. In the salvage cohort, the best overall response rate was 48.1%. The 6-month progression-free survival and overall survival (OS) was 27.7% and 49.6%, respectively. In the bridging cohort, 51.2% of patients could be successfully bridged with pola to the intended CAR T-cell therapy. The combination of pola bridging and successful CAR T-cell therapy resulted in a 6-month OS of 77.9% calculated from pola initiation. Pola vedotin-rituximab without a chemotherapy backbone demonstrated encouraging overall response rates up to 40%, highlighting both an appropriate alternative for patients unsuitable for chemotherapy and a new treatment option for bridging before leukapheresis in patients intended for CAR T-cell therapy. Furthermore, 7 of 12 patients with previous failure of CAR T-cell therapy responded to a pola-containing regimen. These findings suggest that pola may serve as effective salvage and bridging treatment of r/r LBCL patients.

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