Understanding the Pendulum Swing in CLL Research Over the Last Decade

In this episode of the “CURE Talks Cancer” podcast, we spoke with Dr. Matthew Davids about the results of a clinical trial that assessed the addition of Copiktra (duvelisib) to fludarabine, cyclophosphamide and Rituxan (rituximab) in the frontline setting for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) aged 65 years and younger.

Davids, director of clinical research in the Lymphoma Program at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, also provides insight into the current CLL landscape and discusses what he refers to as a swing in the pendulum of CLL research over the last 10 years, and how that pendulum swing has created a slight gap for the assessment of younger patients with the disease. 

“As the novel agents have come of age here in the last decade, that as a field, we've gotten better at kind of shifting the studies into older patients,” Davids explained in an interview with CURE®. “… One kind of gap that I can see right now in the field is that because the pendulum has swung, I think appropriately toward the older population in terms of the trials, we actually do seem to have fewer trials kind of focused on the young fit patients compared to the old days. And so that is an area I think of interest for sure is the novel agent-based approaches in the young patients.”