Hertzberg, Mark

Abstract There is a lack of large comparative study on the outcomes of reduced intensity conditioning (RIC) in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) transplantation using fludarabine/busulfan (FB) and fludarabine/melphalan (FM) regimens. Adult AML patients from Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research who received first RIC allo-transplant between 2001 and 2015 were studied. Patients were excluded if they received cord blood or identical twin transplant, total body irradiation in conditioning, or graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) prophylaxis with in vitro T-cell depletion. Primary outcome was overall survival (OS), secondary end points were leukemia-free survival (LFS), nonrelapse mortality (NRM), relapse, and GVHD. Multivariate survival model was used with adjustment for patient, leukemia, and transplant-related factors. A total of 622 patients received FM and 791 received FB RIC. Compared with FB, the FM group had fewer transplant in complete remission (CR), fewer matched sibling donors, and less usage of anti-thymocyte globulin or alemtuzumab. More patients in the FM group received marrow grafts and had transplantation before 2005. OS was significantly lower within the first 3 months posttransplant in the FM group (hazard ratio [HR] = 1.82, P < .001), but was marginally superior beyond 3 months (HR = 0.87, P = .05). LFS was better with FM compared with FB (HR = 0.89, P = .05). NRM was significantly increased in the FM group during the first 3 months of posttransplant (HR = 3.85, P < .001). Long-term relapse was lower with FM (HR = 0.65, P < .001). Analysis restricted to patients with CR showed comparable results. In conclusion, compared with FB, the FM RIC showed a marginally superior long-term OS and LFS and a lower relapse rate. A lower OS early posttransplant within 3 months was largely the result of a higher early NRM.

Introduction Multiple myeloma (MM), relapsed or refractory (R/R) to standard of care therapies, represents a treatment indication with a significant unmet clinical need. Transcriptional activation of c-MYC through bromodomain and extra-terminal (BET) proteins contributes to the malignant phenotype of the disease. RO is a novel thienodiazepine, small molecule, non-covalent inhibitor of the BET family of bromodomains. Preclinical studies with BET inhibitors have demonstrated significant single agent in vivo activity in myeloma, accompanied by down-regulation of MYC and MYC target gene expression. We report results of a monotherapy phase 1b study of RO in R/R MM (NCT03068351). Methods Eligible pts with R/R MM included those treated with at least three prior lines of multiple myeloma therapy, including a proteasome inhibitor and an immunomodulatory agent, or who are double-refractory to a proteasome inhibitor and an immunomodulatory agent. Primary refractory myeloma pts were only allowed in the dose escalation portion of the study. In the dose escalation (part I), pts received subcutaneous (SC) escalating doses of RO (0.30-0.65 mg/kg) in a standard 3 + 3 design on days 1 - 14 of 21-day cycles to determine both the maximum tolerated dose (MTD) and recommended dose (RD). In the expansion cohort (part II), pts received RO as monotherapy at the RD level. Primary endpoint was safety (DLT, MTD, RD) and secondary endpoints included evaluation of pharmacodynamics (CD11b expression) and preliminary efficacy assessments based on IMWG criteria. Results Between June 2017 and April 2019, a total of 24 pts were enrolled in the US, the UK and Australia. 13 pts were enrolled in the dose escalation and 11 pts in the expansion part. The median age of pts was 65.5 years (range: 46 - 82 years). The study population was heavily pretreated with a median of 6 (3-9) prior therapies. Pts were refractory to immunomodulatory drugs (63%), proteasome inhibitors (46%), both (46%), or daratumumab (42%). 57 total cycles were administered, with a median of 2 (1-6) cycles per patient (pt). Two DLTs occurred in one pt in the 0.65 mg/kg cohort (thrombocytopenia grade 4, angina pectoris grade 3). The recommended dose is 0.65 mg/kg. Grade 3 treatment emergent AEs in ≥ 5% of pts were thrombocytopenia (11 pts [45.8%]), anemia (7 pts [29.2%]), fatigue (3 pts [12.5%]), injection site reaction, malaise, decreased appetite, and hyponatremia (2 pts [8.3%] each). 3 pts (12.5%) experienced a total of 4 AEs leading to discontinuation of the study treatment; these AEs were left ventricular dysfunction, fatigue, sepsis, and staphylococcal bacteremia (the latter two AEs occurred in the same pt). A total of 8 deaths (33.3%) were reported in the study, all as a consequence of progressive disease. The best overall response recorded was partial response in 4 pts (16.7 %), 3 of whom having received prior daratumumab. One pt experienced a minimal response, and stable disease was reported in 12 out of 24 (50%). There was no evidence for a dose-related increase in efficacy, though data are very limited (Table). Responses obtained during treatment with RO6870810 were short-lived and lasted for appr. 6 weeks. As evidence of target engagement, pharmacodynamic profiling demonstrated decreases in CD11b levels in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (Figure). Conclusions Treatment of MM pts with the BET inhibitor RO as monotherapy resulted in a high incidence of cytopenias, especially grade 3-4 thrombocytopenia and grade 3 anemia. However, none of these events led to study drug discontinuation. Cytopenias are a known side effect of BET inhibitors, with thrombocytopenia frequently reported as a DLT in various pt populations. Pts with NUT carcinoma, other solid tumors, or diffuse large B-cell lymphoma treated in the First in Man trial of RO had a low rate of cytopenias, indicating that the underlying disease and the extensive pre-treatment in MM may play a role in their occurrence (publication submitted). In this heavily pretreated R/R MM population, we have established 0.65 mg/kg as the recommended monotherapy dose. Pharmacodynamics effects were evident at this dose, but as monotherapy in this R/R MM cohort, response rates were low and less durable. Future drug combination approaches may result in an improved benefit / risk ratio. Disclosures Ramasamy: Janssen: Consultancy, Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Research Funding, Speakers Bureau; BMS: Consultancy, Research Funding, Speakers Bureau; Takeda: Consultancy, Research Funding, Speakers Bureau; Amgen: Consultancy, Honoraria, Research Funding; Abbvie: Consultancy, Honoraria; Sanofi: Consultancy, Honoraria; Oncopeptides: Consultancy, Honoraria. Nooka:Adaptive Technologies: Consultancy, Honoraria; Oncopeptides: Consultancy, Honoraria; Spectrum Pharmaceuticals: Consultancy; GlaxoSmithKline: Consultancy, Honoraria, Other: Personal Fees: Travel/accomodations/expenses, Research Funding; Takeda: Consultancy, Honoraria, Research Funding; Celgene: Consultancy, Honoraria, Research Funding; Janssen: Consultancy, Honoraria, Research Funding; Amgen: Consultancy, Honoraria, Research Funding; Bristol-Myers Squibb: Consultancy, Honoraria, Research Funding; Sanofi: Consultancy, Honoraria; Karyopharm Therapeutics, Adaptive technologies: Consultancy, Honoraria, Research Funding. Quach:Amgen, Celgene, karyopharm, GSK, Janssen Cilag, Sanofi.: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; GlaxoSmithKline, Karyopharm, Amgen, Celgene, Janssen Cilag: Consultancy; GlaxoSmithKline, Karyopharm, Amgen, Celgene, Janssen Cilag: Honoraria; Amgen, sanofi, celgene, Karyopharm, GSK: Research Funding. Htut:City of Hope Medical Center: Current Employment. Popat:AbbVie: Consultancy, Honoraria; Celgene: Consultancy, Honoraria; Takeda: Consultancy, Honoraria, Other: Travel support, Research Funding; Bristol Myers Squibb: Consultancy, Honoraria; GSK: Consultancy, Honoraria, Other: TRAVEL, ACCOMMODATIONS, EXPENSES (paid by any for-profit health care company); Janssen: Consultancy, Honoraria, Other: TRAVEL, ACCOMMODATIONS, EXPENSES (paid by any for-profit health care company). Liedtke:Jazz Pharmaceuticals: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; GSK: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Pfizer: Honoraria; Janssen: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Celgene: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Caelum: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Adaptive: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees. Tuchman:Caelum: Honoraria; Sanofi: Honoraria, Research Funding; Amgen: Research Funding; Janssen: Research Funding; Oncopeptides: Consultancy; Roche: Research Funding; Karyopharm: Honoraria, Research Funding; Celgene: Honoraria, Research Funding, Speakers Bureau. Hertzberg:Gilead: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; MSD: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Abbvie: Honoraria; BMS: Honoraria; Takeda: Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Janssen: Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Roche: Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Other: Support of parent study and funding of editorial support. Demario:BioNTech SE: Current Employment, Current equity holder in publicly-traded company; Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd.: Current equity holder in publicly-traded company, Ended employment in the past 24 months. Nueesch:Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd.: Current Employment, Current equity holder in publicly-traded company. Chesne:Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd.: Current Employment, Current equity holder in publicly-traded company. Franjkovic:Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd.: Current Employment, Current equity holder in publicly-traded company. Lechner:Roche Diagnostics GmbH: Current Employment, Current equity holder in publicly-traded company. Kornacker:Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd.: Current Employment, Current equity holder in publicly-traded company.

Abstract Background. Recent clinical trials based on immunotherapies targeting the PD-1/PD-L1 pathway have shown striking durable responses in a subset of patients with solid cancers. The Programmed death 1 (PD-1) protein is a key immune checkpoint inhibitor expressed by activated T cells. Its ligand, PD-L1, was reported highly expressed by tumor cells in some diffuse large B-cell lymphomas (DLBCL) of non-Germinal Center phenotype. We recently reported on the French multicenter GOELAMS075 trial that pre-treatment soluble PD-L1 (sPD-L1) in plasma was elevated in DLBCL patients compared to controls, and that elevated sPD-L1 was associated with inferior overall survival (OS), independent of the International Prognostic Index (IPI) and other clinical factors (Rossille et al., Leukemia 2014). Here, we replicate and extend these findings in two independent studies from Australia and the US. Methods. The protein expression of sPD-L1 was evaluated using a commercial ELISA kit. The French discovery cohort consisted of 288 adults with newly diagnosed aggressive DLBCL, age 18 to 60 years, and treated with R-CHOP or high dose chemotherapy plus rituximab followed by autologous stem cell support (clinicaltrials.gov: NCT00561379); there were also 60 controls. The Australian study consisted of 51 DLBCL patients age 18 to 71 years, all stages, treated with R-CHOP14, along with 57 controls. The US study was an observational cohort from the Iowa/Mayo Lymphoma SPORE and consisted of 225 DLBCLs, age 19 to 92 years, all stages, treated with immunochemotherapy, along with 98 controls. Plasma samples were collected pre-treatment using EDTA tubes for the Australian and the US cohorts, BDª P100 tubes for the French cohort. sPD-L1 expression was measured in Rennes, France (French & US samples) and in Brisbane, Australia (Australian samples).The Kaplan-Meier method and Cox regression were used to model the association of sPD-L1 with OS. The 95th percentile of the sPD-L1 levels in each matched control group was used as the cutoff point to define elevated sPD-L1 levels. Results. Replicating the French findings, sPD-L1 levels were significantly higher for DLBCL patients compared to controls in both the US (P<0.0001) and Australian (P<0.0001) studies (Figure 1). The odds ratios for elevated sPD-L1 among patients compared to controls were 10.7 (95% CI 3.3-22.0), 8.9 (95% CI 3.1-25.3) and 12.6 (95% CI 2.7-28.0) for the French, US and Australian studies, respectively. In the French cohort, elevated sPD-L1 levels were associated with inferior OS (Hazard Ratio (HR)=2.05; 95% CI 1.18-3.57), and this was replicated in the US cohort (HR=1.71; 95% CI 0.97-3.01) (Figure 2). Due to the similarity of the results, we next pooled the French and US cohorts to increase power for multivariate and subset analyses. The median age at diagnosis of the 513 patients was 54 years; 29% were more than 60 years old; 69% of the patients had stage III-IV disease; 56% were IPI intermediate-risk and 9% were IPI high-risk patients. The median follow-up was 48 months (range, 0.5-126) overall, and 66 months for the patients still alive; there were 102 deaths. Using a cutpoint of 1729 pg/mL from the combined studies, patients with elevated sPD-L1 had inferior OS compared to patients without elevated sPD-L1, with 3-year OS rates estimated at 78% (95% CI 71.8-84.9) vs. 87.8% (95%CI 84.5-91.4) (P<0.01). In multivariate analysis, elevated sPD-L1 (HR=1.75; 95%CI 1.16-2.64), age (HR=1.03; 95%CI 1.02-1.05), high-risk IPI score (HR=3.71; 95%CI 1.91-7.21) and ALC ² 1 G/L (HR=2.19; 95%CI 1.44-3.33) were all significant at P<0.01. In analyses stratified by IPI, the 3-year OS rates among high-risk patients (IPI 4-5) was 40.9% (95% CI 23.6-71.0) for elevated sPD-L1 vs. 82.1% (95% CI 69.1-97.6) for not elevated sPD-L1 (P<0.01). There was no association of sPD-L1 with 3-year OS among low risk (IPI 0-1) or intermediate-risk (IPI 2-3) patients. Conclusion. We confirmed that sPD-L1 levels are higher in pre-treatment plasma samples of newly diagnosed DLBCL patients compared to controls, and that elevated levels of sPD-L1 are associated with inferior OS in DLBCL patients treated with immunochemotherapy, and this is independent of IPI and other clinical factors. Among high risk patients, we identified a subgroup with less than 50% survival. Figure 1 Figure 1. Figure 2 Figure 2. Disclosures No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.

BACKGROUNDEarly treatment failure (ETF) in follicular lymphoma (FL), defined as relapse or progression within 2 years of frontline chemoimmunotherapy, is a newly recognized marker of poor survival and identifies a high‐risk group of patients with an expected 5‐year overall survival (OS) rate of approximately 50%. Transplantation is an established option for relapsed FL, but its efficacy in this specific ETF FL population has not been previously evaluated.METHODSThis study compared autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (auto‐HCT) with either matched sibling donor (MSD) or matched unrelated donor (MUD) allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (allo‐HCT) as the first transplantation approach for patients with ETF FL (age ≥ 18 years) undergoing auto‐HCT or allo‐HCT between 2002 and 2014. The primary endpoint was OS. The secondary endpoints were progression‐free survival, relapse, and nonrelapse mortality (NRM).RESULTSFour hundred forty FL patients had ETF (auto‐HCT, 240; MSD hematopoietic stem cell transplantation [HCT], 105; and MUD HCT, 95). With a median follow‐up of 69 to 73 months, the adjusted probability of 5‐year OS was significantly higher after auto‐HCT (70%) or MSD HCT (73%) versus MUD HCT (49%; P = .0008). The 5‐year adjusted probability of NRM was significantly lower for auto‐HCT (5%) versus MSD (17%) or MUD HCT (33%; P < .0001). The 5‐year adjusted probability of disease relapse was lower with MSD (31%) or MUD HCT (23%) versus auto‐HCT (58%; P < .0001).CONCLUSIONSPatients with high‐risk FL, as defined by ETF, undergoing auto‐HCT for FL have low NRM and a promising 5‐year OS rate (70%). MSD HCT has lower relapse rates than auto‐HCT but similar OS. Cancer 2018;124:2541‐51. © 2018 American Cancer Society.

Summary For diffuse large B‐cell lymphoma ( DLBCL ) patients progressing after autologous haematopoietic cell transplantation (auto HCT ), allogeneic HCT (allo HCT ) is often considered, although limited information is available to guide patient selection. Using the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research ( CIBMTR ) database, we identified 503 patients who underwent allo HCT after disease progression/relapse following a prior auto HCT . The 3‐year probabilities of non‐relapse mortality, progression/relapse, progression‐free survival ( PFS ) and overall survival ( OS ) were 30, 38, 31 and 37% respectively. Factors associated with inferior PFS on multivariate analysis included Karnofsky performance status ( KPS ) <80, chemoresistance, auto HCT to allo HCT interval <1‐year and myeloablative conditioning. Factors associated with worse OS on multivariate analysis included KPS <80, chemoresistance and myeloablative conditioning. Three adverse prognostic factors were used to construct a prognostic model for PFS , including KPS <80 (4 points), auto HCT to allo HCT interval <1‐year (2 points) and chemoresistant disease at allo HCT (5 points). This CIBMTR prognostic model classified patients into four groups: low‐risk (0 points), intermediate‐risk (2‐5 points), high‐risk (6‐9 points) or very high‐risk (11 points), predicting 3‐year PFS of 40, 32, 11 and 6%, respectively, with 3‐year OS probabilities of 43, 39, 19 and 11% respectively. In conclusion, the CIBMTR prognostic model identifies a subgroup of DLBCL patients experiencing long‐term survival with allo HCT after a failed prior auto HCT .