Asher Chanan-Khan, of the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., called the
addition of ibrutinib, a drug that targets cancer cells, to the
chemotherapy agent bendamustine and the immunotherapy drug rituximab "a
blessing from God" for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia who
had not responded well to the two drugs alone. Khan, who led a study of
the three-drug combination therapy, said its development will wind up as
the "most important changing point in the history" of the disease.
In a study of 578 people, the group of patients that received the
third drug improved their chances of avoiding progression of the disease
or death by 80 percent when compared to patients who received a
placebo. Perhaps more significantly, a median limit for progression free
survival of the patients receiving the third drug had not yet been
reached when the study results were collected. The drug was deemed so
effective that 90 patients who had received the placebo were switched
over to the group getting the third drug.
The triple-drug therapy had no more side effects than the traditional treatment, the research showed.
When a separate group of researchers added a cancer-targeting drug
called obinutuzumab to the chemotherapy drug bendamustine, they produced
much better results for people suffering from the "indolent" form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
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