Dr. Wang on the Evolving Treatment Landscape of MCL

Michael Wang, MD, professor, Departments of Lymphoma/Myeloma and Stem Cell Transplantation and Cellular Therapy, Division of Cancer Medicine, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses the evolving treatment landscape of mantle cell lymphoma (MCL).

Significant progress has been made in terms of drug development in MCL and the speed of progress has increased, Wang explains. For example, patients with MCL were traditionally treated with chemotherapy until the development of targeted therapies, such as the BTK inhibitors ibrutinib (Imbruvica), acalabrutinib (Calquence), and zanubrutinib (Brukinsa). Another BTK inhibitor, pirtobrutinib (LOXO-305) is being developed for use in patients with MCL, Wang says.

However, BTK inhibitors all target the same pathway, so venetoclax (Venclexta), a BCL-2 inhibitor, offers an additional option that demonstrated efficacy alone or in combination regimens for patients with MCL, Wang says. Additionally, novel targeted agents like AKT or PI3K inhibitors are under development to further push the paradigm forward.

In addition to targeted therapies, immunotherapies like rituximab (Rituxan), obinutuzumab (Gazyva), and the investigational CD19-directed antibody tafasitamab-cxix (Monjuvi) represents an additional class of agents used in MCL, Wang concludes.