[VIRTUAL] Tailoring Therapy in Waldenström Macroglobulinemia (SOHO 2021)
Data from a retrospective review of 63 patients, with known CXCR4 mutational status in 49 patients, treated with bortezomib and rituximab showed no significant difference in PFS or OS when comparing patients with or without CXCR4 mutations.6 A prospective study of 69 patients treated with bendamustine plus rituximab showed no difference in disease response or survival outcomes based on the CXCR4 mutational status.7 Similar results were also reported in a pooled analysis of patients treated with bortezomib, carfilzomib, or ixazomib in the frontline setting.8 No difference in response rates, PFS or OS after frontline treatment initiation was noted between patients with and without CXCR4 mutations...Patients with MYD88WT and CXCR4WT disease, which constitute 5–10% of patients with WM, have specific clinical characteristics, such as shorter overall survival (OS) and increased risk of transformation to aggressive lymphoma.10–12 Bendamustine plus rituximab should be considered an option given reported efficacy in a retrospective study.13 However, a prospective study suggested a shorter PFS in the six MYD88WT patients.2 Lower response rates to single agent ibrutinib were reported in a study using an allele-specific polymerase chain reaction (AS-PCR) assay in CD19-selected bone marrow cells to assess MYD88 mutational status.14 In the INNOVATE study, the combination of ibrutinib plus rituximab was associated with an ORR of 81%, a major response rate of 63%, a VGPR rate or 27% and a 30-month PFS rate of 80% in patients with MYD88WT and CXCR4WT disease.9 In this study, however, the MYD88 mutational status was assessed in 136 patients using next-generation sequencing (NGS) in unselected bone marrow cells...In the acalabrutinib study, 50 of 106 (47%) of the participants were genotyped and 14 (28%) had MYD88WT disease...Zanubrutinib therapy was associated with an ORR, major response rate and VGPR rate of 80%, 50% and 27%, with an 18-month PFS rate of 68%. Genomic profiling has emerged as a potential approach to tailoring treatment options in patients with WM.