SAN DIEGO — Brian Koffman found himself in a situation a couple years ago that most chronic lymphocytic leukemia patients eventually do: relapse. The expectation in CLL is that, no matter what therapy or how many therapies patients have been on, the cancer will eventually recur if the patient lives long enough. The hope is that by that time, there will be yet another treatment to try. But Koffman, after relapsing or refracting from targeted therapies, immunotherapies, and bone marrow transplant, had just about run through all the options.
Just in time, a new clinical trial had opened up. When Koffman, a former family physician and founder of the patient advocacy group the CLL Society, learned about it, he rushed to enroll. It was a small trial testing AbbVie’s Epkinly, an immunotherapy drug, in CLL for the first time — and the results suggest it may be able to offer some relapsed or refractory CLL patients a chance at a complete remission.
Epkinly is a type of drug called a bispecific T cell engager. These compounds are double-armed antibodies that can grab onto cancer cells on one end and T cells with the other end. By doing so, the drug helps to guide immune cells to cancer cells and trigger the immune system to destroy the cancer. Epkinly is already approved in relapsed or refractory large B cell lymphoma and follicular lymphoma and, in theory, it should also work in certain leukemias as well.
This article is exclusive to STAT+ subscribers
Unlock this article — plus daily coverage and analysis of the pharma industry — by subscribing to STAT+.
Already have an account? Log in