This Clinical Trial May Have Treated Aggressive Lymphoma Without Chemo

(HealthDay News) — An experimental cancer treatment regimen is achieving full remissions in some patients with aggressive B-cell lymphoma, researchers report. The five-drug combination does not include chemotherapy. Rather, it simultaneously zeroes in on several molecular pathways that diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) tumors rely on to survive. B-cell lymphoma is a cancer of cells in the body’s immune system. DLBCL is the most common type of lymphoma. This clinical trial, conducted by researchers from the National Institutes of Health, included 50 patients with DLBCL whose prognosis was grim. Their cancers had either returned after periods of remission or were no longer responding to treatment. “Many of these patients who stopped responding to standard treatments would have otherwise died within a year, and now we have a good proportion who are still alive past two years, and some past four years,” said study co-leader Dr. Christopher Melani, of the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) Center for Cancer Research. The 5-drug combination The treatment combines five drugs — venetoclax, ibrutinib, prednisone, obinutuzumab and lenalidomide. Using the five initials, it’s called ViPOR, for short. The drugs were given simultaneously in two-week cycles, with a weeklong break between cycles. Researchers said the regimen shrank...