CHICAGO — A novel first-line regimen significantly improved PFS compared with standard chemoimmunotherapy for older patients with mantle cell lymphoma, according to randomized phase 3 study results presented at ASCO Annual Meeting.
The experimental regimen — ibrutinib (Imbruvica; Pharmacyclics, Janssen) combined with bendamustine and rituximab (Genentech, Biogen), followed by rituximab maintenance — exhibited a safety profile consistent with prior reports of each drug, results of the double-blind SHINE study showed.
“The magnitude of benefit surprised me. We observed a