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Lymphoma

Attacking NHL Early

Summary & Participants

Targeted therapies are not just for advanced cases non Hodgkin's lymphoma. Learn how they can help against indolent or low-grade cancers as well.

Medically Reviewed On: July 11, 2008

Webcast Transcript

ANNOUNCER: Another role for monoclonal antibodies may be to prolong remission, what's sometimes called maintenance therapy. Sometimes that means extending the use of rituximab when it's used as initial therapy. Another maintenance approach is to add monoclonal antibodies following chemotherapy.

JOHN HAINSWORTH, MD: One possibility with cancer treatment that's been considered for a long time is perhaps you can give initial treatment, get somebody in remission, and then continue to give treatment intermittently or even at a low level, perhaps, for a long time and extend that remission.

SANDRA J. HORNING, MD: Doctors have tested different treatments given after chemotherapy known as maintenance or consolidation treatment. Interferon, for instance, was used in this setting. More recently, rituximab has been employed as a means to try to maintain a remission that was initially achieved by chemotherapy.

In a large clinical trial conducted in the United States where rituximab was given to patients who had received combination chemotherapy-and this was in a randomized trial where the rituximab was compared to observation-the rituximab treatment actually further improved the quality of response in some patients, and it delayed the time to disease progression.

ANNOUNCER: There's still some uncertainty about possible side effects when rituximab is used as long term, maintenance therapy. That's because the original studies only followed patients for two years.

JOHN HAINSWORTH, MD: Whether or not there are going to be any late-developing side effects or cumulative problems from using it for longer than that is unclear. I think most people don't expect that, but there isn't data about that.

ANNOUNCER: Doctors are investigating the use of several new drugs, including different types of monoclonal antibodies, to improve treatments of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. And even though rituximab has already been demonstrated as effective in many circumstances, it's a new enough drug that doctors are still learning about how to use it best.

JOHN LEONARD, MD: I think that we've made a lot of progress. I think that these studies have suggested that we can improve upon either rituximab itself or we can improve upon chemotherapy by adding rituximab. I think we haven't yet defined what's the best way to use it, but it's clear that by tweaking these different things and coming up with these new regimens, we are improving outcomes. So we are making progress, but I think there's still a ways to go as to saying what's the best way to use this particular type of treatment.

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