What You Need to Know
John Theurer Cancer Center investigators participated in the large phase III multicenter SHINE study.
This study reported that using the drug ibrutinib (Imbruvica®) in combination with standard therapy B-R as initial treatment for mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) slowed the disease growth by 52% in older people newly diagnosed with the disease.
The treatment could become the new standard of care for older people with mantle cell lymphoma who may not be able to tolerate more intensive treatment regimens.
In this study, mantle cell lymphoma patients 65 years and older, and untreated, were randomly assigned to receive six cycles of bendamustine and rituximab with either ibrutinib (261 patients) or a placebo (262 patients). Patients who responded to treatment received up to 12 additional doses of rituximab as maintenance therapy. Researchers compared progression-free survival (PFS) between the two groups.
The study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine on June 3, 2022.