Transcript
Announcer:
This is Project Oncology on ReachMD. On this episode, we’ll hear from Dr. Jonathon Cohen, a board-certified hematologist and medical oncologist at Emory Winship Cancer Institute in Atlanta. He’ll be highlighting the biggest unanswered questions surrounding chemotherapy-free approaches for mantle cell lymphoma, which he spoke about at the 2026 Society of Hematologic Oncology Annual Meeting. Here’s Dr. Cohen now.
Dr. Cohen:
It's very exciting that there are a number of chemo-free approaches using either immune therapy or oral targeted therapy. I think one of the biggest questions, at least in my mind, is: who should receive this? Are these best for everybody? Should they be reserved for patients who can't tolerate chemotherapy or for patients who have particular high-risk features?
Additionally, I think another place that, at least in my own mind, is challenging, is understanding if a patient gets a chemo-free approach in the frontline and then has a recurrence, how do they respond to some of these same therapies in the relapse setting? Would they still benefit from a covalent BTK inhibitor in that case, or do they need to go on to a noncovalent BTK inhibitor? And what does that mean for their prognosis long term?
And so I think there are clearly still a few questions that will need to be answered as we start to incorporate this further into our routine practice. But clearly, compared to where we started with mantle cell 15 to 20 years ago, it's really been a revolution and a significant improvement.
Although we have made a lot of progress with chemo-free approaches, this disease is very different than chronic lymphocytic leukemia, or CLL, where chemotherapy has been pretty much entirely eliminated from typical treatment. In mantle cell, we're still figuring out the best way to utilize new therapies, when chemotherapy should still be given, how it should be given, and how much.
And so I think the key point in my mind is that this is a story that is still being written. It is not a finished product, and I'm hopeful over the next couple of years that the community will get more and more information and more and more comfortable about identifying the optimal approach for different patients.
Announcer:
That was Dr. Jonathon Cohen sharing his insights on what we still need to learn when it comes to chemotherapy-free approaches for mantle cell lymphoma. To access this and other episodes in our series, visit Project Oncology on ReachMD.com, where you can Be Part of the Knowledge. Thanks for listening!
