Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2022;15(2):121-124.
doi: 10.1007/s12254-022-00804-x. Epub 2022 Apr 14.

Agony of choice-selecting chronic lymphocytic leukemia treatment in 2022

Jan-Paul Bohn  1
Affiliations
Review

Agony of choice-selecting chronic lymphocytic leukemia treatment in 2022

Jan-Paul Bohn. Memo. 2022.

Abstract

The treatment landscape of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) has undergone profound change in recent years. Targeted therapies have outnumbered chemotherapy-based treatment approaches demonstrating superior efficacy and tolerability profiles across nearly all CLL patient subgroups in the frontline and relapsed disease treatment setting. Individual selection of these novel agents is rather driven by patients' comorbidities and personal preferences than fitness and age. Given the high amount of currently licensed novel agents in both treatment-naïve as well as relapsed CLL patients and currently limited evidence from comparative clinical trials, clinicians sometimes appear spoilt for choice when selecting optimal therapy. This short review discusses recent clinical trial data focusing on treatment with targeted drugs and aims to help guide CLL treatment selection in individual patients.

Keywords: Acalabrutinib; COVID-19; Chemoimmunotherapy; Ibrutinib; Venetoclax.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interestJ.-P. Bohn reports personal fees from AbbVie, Astra-Zeneca and Janssen for advisory board participation.

References

    1. Shanafelt TD, Wang XV, Kay NE, Hanson CA, O’Brien S, Barrientos J, Jelinek DF, Braggio E, Leis JF, Zhang CC, et al. Ibrutinib-Rituximab or chemoimmunotherapy for chronic lymphocytic leukemia. N Engl J Med. 2019;381:432–443. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa1817073. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Eichhorst B, Robak T, Montserrat E, Ghia P, Niemann CU, Kater AP, Gregor M, Cymbalista F, Buske C, Hillmen P, et al. Chronic lymphocytic leukaemia: ESMO clinical practice guidelines for diagnosis, treatment and follow-up. Ann Oncol. 2021;32:23–33. doi: 10.1016/j.annonc.2020.09.019. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Eichhorst B, Niemann C, Kater AP, Fürstenau M, Von Tresckow J, Zhang C, Robrecht S, Gregor M, Juliusson G, Thornton P, et al. A randomized phase III study of Venetoclax-based time-limited combination treatments (RVe, GVe, GIVe) vs standard chemoimmunotherapy (CIT: FCR/BR) in frontline chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) of fit patients: first co-primary endpoint analysis of the international intergroup GAIA (CLL13) trial. Blood. 2021;138:71–71. doi: 10.1182/blood-2021-146161. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Koehler AB, Leung N, Call TG, Rabe KG, Achenbach SJ, Ding W, Kenderian SS, Leis JF, Wang Y, Muchtar E, et al. Incidence and risk of tumor lysis syndrome in patients with relapsed chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) treated with venetoclax in routine clinical practice. Leuk Lymphoma. 2020;61:2383–2388. doi: 10.1080/10428194.2020.1768384. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Munir T, Brown JR, O’Brien S, Barrientos JC, Barr PM, Reddy NM, Coutre S, Tam CS, Mulligan SP, Jaeger U, et al. Final analysis from RESONATE: Up to six years of follow-up on ibrutinib in patients with previously treated chronic lymphocytic leukemia or small lymphocytic lymphoma. Am J Hematol. 2019;94:1353–1363. doi: 10.1002/ajh.25638. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources