Steven Devine, MD, Discusses Exciting Abstracts From ASH 2021

At the 2021 American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting, Steven Devine, MD, chief medical officer of the National Marrow Donor Program/Be the Match and associate scientific director for Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research (CIBMTR), discussed abstracts that he found particularly interesting. He started the discussion with the ZUMA-7 trial (NCT03391466), which utilized axicabragene ciloleucel (axi-cel; Yescarta) compared with standard of care in patients with relapsed/refractory large B-cell lymphoma. Patients treated with axi-cel had a significant improvement in event-free survival as well as quality-of-life measures.^1,2

Transcript:

The ZUMA-7 abstract that was presented at the plenary session and has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine was potentially practice changing. The point that was made during the plenary session is that we need to do a better job enrolling a diverse set of patients, and this is certainly a message for the blood and marrow transplant field.

From the transplant perspective, there was another CIBMTR analysis looking at the impact of donors and outcomes in patients with lymphoma. We compared haploidentical donors to matched unrelated donors and virtually all outcomes favored the use of matched unrelated donors over haploidentical donors if post-transplant cyclophosphamide is used for graft-versus-host disease prophylaxis. That’s the second study that’s analyzed if post-transplant cyclophosphamide is used, that matched unrelated donor might be favored over haploidentical donor if the unrelated donor is readily available.

References

1. Locke FL, Miklos DB, Jacobson C, et al. Primary Analysis of ZUMA‑7: A Phase 3 Randomized Trial of Axicabtagene Ciloleucel (Axi-Cel) Versus Standard‑of‑Care Therapy in Patients with Relapsed/Refractory Large B-Cell Lymphoma. Presented at the 63rd American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting; December 11-14, 2021. Atlanta, GA. Abstract 2. https://bit.ly/33q8RFy

2. Elsawy M, Chavez J, Avivi I, et al. Patient-reported outcomes in a phase 3, randomized, open-label study evaluating the efficacy of axicabtagene ciloleucel (axi-cel) versus standard of care therapy in patients with relapsed/refractory large B-cell lymphoma (ZUMA-7). Presented at the 63rd American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting; December 11-14, 2021. Atlanta, GA. Abstract 430.