Addressing the Unmet Needs for the Treatment of CLL

Transcript:

Susan M. O’Brien, MD: One of the historically and most important unmet needs in chronic lymphocytic leukemia was the fact that we needed therapy for patients with deletion 17p. That is because all our therapies, up until very recently, were chemotherapy based, and we know that those patients have very poor response rates. If they do get a response, they have very short remission duration. That unmet medical need, to some extent, has now been met, I would say, with the small molecules ibrutinib (Imbruvica), idelalisib (Zydelig), and venetoclax (Venclexta). What we’re looking at now is not necessarily small patient subsets but how we cure the larger population with CLL. There may be a cure fraction in the mutated IGHV patients with FCR (Fludarabine/cyclophosphamide/rituximab), but that accounts for a very small percentage of the patients.

Transcript Edited for Clarity