New Treatment for Mantle Cell Lymphoma
Doctors
at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and the Royal Melbourne Hospital have
joined forces with pharmaceutical companies in a world-leading clinical trial
showing early signs of promising results.
The investigator-led
trial combines two novel and highly targeted anti-cancer drugs – ibrutinib and
venetoclax (also known as ABT-199) – to treat patients with mantle cell
lymphoma.
“Mantle
cell lymphoma is an uncommon subtype of lymphoma that is often incurable with
conventional chemotherapy treatments,” says Professor John Seymour, Co-Director
of Cancer Medicine at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre.
“When
it becomes resistant to chemotherapy, no effective treatments are currently
available.
“For
this trial, we’ve combined two drugs that work in different ways to shrink
mantle cell lymphoma. Individually they are very effective for some time
however eventually the cancer becomes resistant to each drug. By using them
together, we are seeing even better responses.”
John
Fairfield from Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula is the first patient in the
world to receive the combination therapy and reports remarkable results.
“Four
months ago, the lymphoma was invading my lung and I was so breathless I could
barely walk across the room.
“I now
take eight tablets a day, and my breathing has returned to normal. My scans and
bone marrow tests have shown a complete regression of my lymphoma. I feel
incredibly lucky to be involved in the study.”
As with
any new therapy, more research is required to confirm the power of the
combination treatment.
“We are
very encouraged by the early results, and we have not observed any unusual
side-effects in the three patients treated so far,” says Professor Andrew
Roberts from The Royal Melbourne Hospital, “but we need more participants to
confirm the effectiveness and safety of the treatment. We would encourage
patients with mantle cell lymphoma that has come back after treatment to
discuss with their doctors whether this trial may be suitable for them.”
Although
mantle cell lymphoma is relatively uncommon in Australia, with a few hundred
cases diagnosed each year, new treatments that are effective for this disease
are usually also active against more common blood cancers such as chronic
lymphocytic leukaemia and other forms of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
“We see
the combination of ibrutinib and venetoclax not as a boutique therapy for an
uncommon disease, but as a new treatment platform with the potential to be
applied more broadly across a range of related blood cancers,” says Dr
Constantine Tam from the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre.
“The
promising signals seen so far suggest that this combination may have the
potential to replace chemotherapy for a variety of common leukaemia’s and
lymphoma that afflict everyday Australians in the not-so-distant future.”
To find
out more visit http://www.petermac.org/
