Page 10 - Haematologica Vol. 110 - January 2025

LANDMARK PAPER IN HEMATOLOGY L. Ysebaert
Figure 1. Timelines of pioneer publications regarding ibrutinib in the treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia: a new hope.
BCR: B-cell receptor; CLL: chronic lymphocytic leukemia; OS: overall survival.
and the corresponding 7-year overall survival rates were 55% and 84%.3
CLL, still incurable, has nevertheless become a disease that is compatible with a near-normal lifespan for patients receiving an oral, well-tolerated, albeit expensive, therapy. New-generation covalent BTK inhibitors are now registered: these have similar efficacy (or maybe superior in specific subsets of patients), but improved tolerance, meaning we have not ended our journey among the BTK inhibitors (non-covalent kinase inhibitors, and even BTK degraders,
can help to manage patients in whom first-generation BTK inhibitors have failed). When B cells become “insane”, we can kick them out from their tissue niches, anergize or kill them, and keep them quiet for more than a decade in half of patients, without chemotherapy or allogeneic stem cell transplantation and their fearsome side effects, fulfilling the dreams of the former developers of PCI-32765.
Disclosures
No conflicts of interest to disclose.
Haematologica | 110 January 2025
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