Dr. Flinn on 5-Year Follow-up of BRIGHT Study in MCL and iNHL

Ian W. Flinn, MD, PhD, director, Blood Cancer Research Program, principal investigator, Sarah Cannon Research Institute, discusses 5-year follow-up of the BRIGHT study, which explored the combination of bendamustine and rituximab (BR) versus standard R-CHOP/R-CVP as a first-line treatment for patients with mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) or indolent non-Hodgkin lymphoma (iNHL).

The BRIGHT study was a randomized phase III trial that began in approximately 2009 comparing these treatments for these patient populations, Flinn explains. The trial was initially designed to be a noninferiority trial. In 2014, it was found that the complete remission rate (CR) was 31% for BR versus 25% for standard R-CHOP/R-CVP chemotherapy.

At the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting, event-free survival and time-to-event analysis data were presented. Here, findings showed that there was a superiority to BR with event-free survival, progression-free survival, and duration of response. However, the overall survival between the 2 arms were very similar, Flinn adds.