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Chemotherapy has been the most effective treatment to date for young and fit patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). Research now shows that a chemo-free drug-combination therapy is more effective and produces fewer side effects. The phase 3 randomized trial, also known as the GAIA/CLL13 trial, was conducted with a total of 920 fit patients with CLL in 159 hospitals in nine European countries and Israel. The patients were placed in four groups and received either chemotherapy and an antibody (standard treatment), or the drug venetoclax in combination with an antibody (either rituximab or obinutuzumab). The fourth group received venetoclax,...

Progression-free survival is significantly longer with zanubrutinib than ibrutinib among patients with relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) or small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL), according to a study. Jennifer R. Brown, M.D., Ph.D. and colleagues randomly assigned patients with relapsed or refractory CLL or SLL who had undergone one previous course of therapy to receive either zanubrutinib or ibrutinib until disease progression or unacceptable toxic effects. Progression-free survival was assessed to determine whether zanubrutinib was non-inferior to ibrutinib in this final analysis; the superiority of zanubrutinib was assessed if non-inferiority was established. The researchers found that among 652 patients, zanubrutinib...

A three-drug combination that sent chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) into deep remission in a broad group of patients in a clinical trial is highly effective in patients with high-risk forms of the disease, a new, phase 2 clinical trial led by investigators indicates. The initial cohort of the trial, which included patients with any subtype of CLL, found that a regimen of acalabrutinib, venetoclax, and obinutuzumab produced deep remissions in 89% of participants. The new cohort, which exclusively included patients with high-risk CLL, found a similar deep-remission rate of 83%. The study's lead author, Christine Ryan, MD, of Dana-Farber, will...

A composite score can identify patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) with very low risk for requiring treatment, according to a study published online Jan. 14 in the European Journal of Haematology. Christian Brieghel, M.D., Ph.D., from Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen, Denmark, and colleagues developed and validated a prognostic index to identify newly diagnosed CLL patients without need of treatment (WONT) by a training/validation approach based on data from 4,708 patients. Composite scores were derived from weighted hazards to define CLL-WONT risk groups. The researchers observed independent associations for age (older than 65 years: 1 point), Binet stage (2 points), lactate...

After Fully-Vaccinated Father Dies of COVID-19, Family Hopes Story Raises Awareness A suburban Chicago family who lost their fully vaccinated father to COVID-19 said they hope his story can help others with certain pre-existing conditions and immune deficiencies as they say his unexpected passing left them with a major "what if." Alan Sporn, owner and president of Spornette International and an outgoing father of four who was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia in 2019, had been taking added precautions throughout the coronavirus pandemic, despite not yet requiring treatment for his cancer. "We were very careful when we visited him, always...

Two new studies published in Blood suggest that the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine may have reduced efficacy in individuals with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and multiple myeloma, two types of blood cancer. According to researchers, these studies could help inform the ideal time for vaccination of these populations. Study suggests two-dose COVID-19 vaccine is less effective for people with CLL as compared to healthy controls. The first study reports that people with CLL had markedly lower immune response rates to the two-dose mRNA COVID-19 vaccine than healthy individuals of the same age. Because clinical trials of these vaccines did not include...

MELBOURNE, Aug. 23 (Xinhua) -- A tablet developed in Melbourne that "melts away" cancer cells has been approved for use in the United States. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced on Tuesday that venetoclax was approved for prescription outside of human trials for patients with chronic lymphotic leukemia (CLL). Venetoclax, which overwhelms the BCL-2 protein that is vital to cancer cell survival, was developed in Melbourne in the 1980s after researchers at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI) discovered the importance of BCL-2. WEHI's head of clinical translation, Professor Andrew Roberts, said that 80...

Doctors have treated only three leukemia patients, but the sensational results from a single shot could be one of the most significant advances in cancer research in decades. And it almost never happened. In the research published Wednesday, doctors at the University of Pennsylvania say the treatment made the most common type of leukemia completely disappear in two of the patients and reduced it by 70 percent in the third. In each of the patients as much as five pounds of cancerous tissue completely melted away in a few weeks, and a year later it is still gone

Clinic researchers are reporting positive results in early leukemia clinical trials using the chemical epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), an active ingredient in green tea. The trial determined that patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) can tolerate the chemical fairly well when high doses are administered in capsule form and that lymphocyte count was reduced in one-third of participants. "We found not only that patients tolerated the green tea extract at very high doses, but that many of them saw regression to some degree of their chronic lymphocytic leukemia," says Tait Shanafelt, M.D., Mayo Clinic hematologist and lead author of the study....