Dr. Brody on the Role of Immunotherapy in Indolent Lymphomas

Joshua Brody, MD, director, Lymphoma program, Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai Hospital, discusses the role of immunotherapy in indolent lymphomas.

The armamentarium in non-Hodgkin lymphoma includes several treatment modalities, such as chemotherapy, antibody-based therapy, small molecule inhibitors, BCL-2 inhibitors, BTK inhibitors, and PI3K inhibitors, says Brody.

However, identifying active immunotherapy options has been challenging in this space, explains Brody. For example, PD-1 inhibitors, which have significant activity in melanoma, lung cancer, and Hodgkin lymphoma, have not shown the same efficacy in indolent lymphomas.

While bispecific antibodies have shown promising activity with high rates of durable remissions in patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma and low-grade lymphomas, treatment with bispecific antibodies may result in antigen loss. Addressing this escape mechanism will be an important clinical challenge to address, concludes Brody.