ASCO 2016: Dr. Susan O'Brien on Acalabrutinib in Frontline CLL

Dr. Susan O'Brien from the University of California at Irvine share the important news from ASCO 2016 relating to CLL.

While ASH and EHA are solely focused on blood cancers, ASCO covers all malignancies, especially solid tumors, so there tends to be less CLL news to report from the Chicago ASCO meeting.

That said, there were several abstracts from ASCO 2016 that deserve our attention.

One involves acalabrutinib,  a promising second generation BTK inhibitor much like ibrutinib, but more selective.

The hope is that it will retain ibrutinib's efficacy and have fewer side effects

The early trial data is positive.

This abstract that gives frontline information for the first time. Response rate was an impressive 97% and there has been no progression.

Here is a link to the trial for all the details. Dr. Byrd was the lead author who also was the lead author on the pivotal ibrutinib article published in NEJM

Here is our interview with Dr. O'Brien;

The news is very encouraging, but we need more data with more patients to be sure what we are seeing bears out.  So far, so good