Tag Archive for: binutuzumab

What is YOUR Role in Choosing a CLL Treatment Approach?

What Is YOUR Role in Choosing a CLL Treatment Approach? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Dr. Jean Koff shares her perspective on the role of patient when deciding on a CLL treatment approach and reviews key factors that should be considered.

Dr. Jean Koff is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Hematology and Oncology at Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University. Learn more about Dr. Koff, here.

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Related Resources:

What Are the Current CLL Treatment Options?

 
What Do You Need to Know About CLL Treatment Side Effects?

What Do You Need to Know About CLL Treatment Side Effects?

What Helps Determine a CLL Patient’s Treatment Options

Transcript:

Katherine Banwell:

What is the patient’s role in deciding on a treatment plan? 

Dr. Jean Koff:

So, it’s very important that the patient be involved in deciding on a treatment plan. Especially in first-line. Because we have these two excellent classes of agents, the BTK inhibitors and the venetoclax- containing regimens. Both of them have been shown to have very good what we call efficacy CLL, meaning that they’re able to control the disease, patient’s symptoms largely at bay for long periods of time. You know, we’re talking an average of years that – that patients are on these therapies. And they each, like I said have different side effect profiles.  

And they’re given in slightly different ways. And so, right now we don’t have data from our clinical trials comparing a BTK inhibitor regimen to a venetoclax-containing regimen in CLL patients to tell us one is better than the other. And so, for that reason, a lot of the decision-making about which therapy is going to be better for you, or which therapy you would prefer, lies with the CLL patient rather than with the doctor. And the things that I ask my patients to consider, there are a couple different things. One is the side effect profile. So, patients may be more or less comfortable with certain  

side effects of one drug compared to another. Or there may be something in the patient’s medical history that puts them more at risk for a certain side effect than another. 

The other major player in this decision-making process is how these drugs are given. So, with ibrutinib (Imbruvica), the ibrutinib is given as a pill that you take once a day, and you take it indefinitely. Meaning you take that pill once a day for as long as it’s doing what it’s supposed to do, which is keeping your CLL under control, and as long as the patient is tolerating it well, meaning you’re not having a lot of uncomfortable side effects from the ibrutinib. So, I have patients who have been on ibrutinib for years and years and years and years.  

The venetoclax-containing regimen for patients who are getting their first-line treatment in CLL is different. It is designed as a – what we call time-limited therapy. And so, this regimen is given in – over about 12 months, 12 or 13 months, and then stopped, as long as the patient has had a good response. The other thing to consider with the venetoclax r egimen, it’s not just the pill. You do take a pill every day, but you also get a – an infusion for about six months of the monoclonal antibody. Meaning that you’ll have to come into the infusion center and get an infu – an IV infusion of this drug called obinutuzumab. The last consideration with the venetoclax regimen that differs in how it’s administered, is the venetoclax often works so well that it can break down the CLL cells a little bit too quickly. And so, for patients who have a very, very high white count, or large lymph nodes due to their CLL, there is a risk of something we call tumor lysis syndrome, which refers to the process where the tumor cells break down very, very quickly, and they produce molecules that are released into the bloodstream that can be dangerous if they get too high or too low. And so, sometimes, in some patients we have to monitor for the tumor lysis syndrome by checking labs fairly frequently after we start the venetoclax. And for some patients that means they have to stay overnight for a night or two in the hospital for lab monitoring.  

So, for some of my patients that I talk to about venetoclax, they say I want to stay out of the hospital, I just want to take a pill, I’m fine taking a pill, I’ll go with the BTK inhibitors. For other patients, they say I don’t want to be on a pill every single day, I will go through this year of therapy, I’m comfortable with that, and I’m happy that I’ll be able to take a break from therapy after one year. So, that ends up being a large factor in many of the conversations I have with my patients about which therapeutic approach we’re going to use in front-line therapy.