Dr. Rummel on Treanda Plus Rituxan in Indolent Lymphoma

Mathias J. Rummel, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine at the University Hospital Giessen in Germany, discusses the long-term results of a phase III trial that examined the front-line combination of bendamustine (Treanda) and rituximab (Rituxan) for patients with indolent and mantle cell lymphomas.

The 514-patient trial compared the combination of bendamustine and rituximab (B-R) to the standard chemotherapy regimen R-CHOP (rituximab, cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, and prednisone), which is widely used as a first-line treatment for many non-Hodgkin lymphomas.

The investigators initially expected to find a better toxicity profile and non-inferiority of B-R over R-CHOP; however, they were pleased to find that B-R was able to delay disease progression longer than R-CHOP.

At the long-term follow up, the B-R arm demonstrated a median progression-free survival of 69.5 months compared to 31.2 months for R-CHOP. Additionally, the side effects associated with the B-R combination were far less than those seen with R-CHOP.

This data solidifies the superiority of B-R over R-CHOP in the font-line, for indolent and mantle cell lymphomas.

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