Paul M. Barr, MD, Discussed 7-Year Follow-Up Data for Ibrutinib as Frontline Treatment of CLL

At the 2021 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting, CancerNetwork® spoke with Paul M. Barr, MD, of the University of Rochester Medical Center, about follow-up to the pivotal phase 3 RESONATE-2 study that led to FDA approval of ibrutinib (Imbruvica) in the frontline setting for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL).

At 6.5 years of follow-up, more than half of patients in the ibrutinib arm (61%) were free of progression versus just 9% in the control arm of chlorambucil. Here, Barr reflects on the significance of these data.

Transcript:

I’d say the key takeaway from RESONATE-2 is that single-agent inbrutinib provides better than we previously expected duration of progression-free survival and duration of disease control. I don’t think anyone envisioned early on that, at this late follow up, we still wouldn’t have reached the median PFS point. We’ve learned that we can—while we’re not curing CLL yet—control the disease for an extended period of time with a single agent in that, with that treatment strategy, we’re not seeing cumulative toxicity or late safety events that would really question this this sort of treatment strategy.

Reference

Barr PM, Owen C, Robak T, et al. Up to seven years of follow-up in the RESONATE-2 study of first-line ibrutinib treatment for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. J Clin Oncol. 2021;39(suppl 15):7523. doi:10.1200/JCO.2021.39.15_suppl.7523