Current and emerging treatment options for a patient with a second relapse of Hodgkin’s lymphoma

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Hodgkin’s lymphoma (HL) is largely a curable disease with excellent prognosis. The standard of care in patients with relapsed disease has been to try salvage chemotherapy followed by an autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT). Managing the patients who relapse after ASCT, is challenging. With the approval of targeted therapies such as PD-1 inhibitors, brentuximab vedotin, the outcomes have improved greatly.

Areas covered: This review summarizes the current data available on the newer therapies as well as the present strategies used to treat patients with relapsed HL after an autologous stem cell transplantation.

Expert commentary: The approval of brentuximab vedotin and PD-L1 inhibitors has ushered in a new era of targeted therapy in HL. There are currently several targeted therapies under investigation, particularly in the setting of relapsed disease. The current challenges faced are how best to integrate these newer therapies into the existing treatment regimens, finding a right combination with minimal toxicities, role of allogenic transplant in the era of targeted therapy.

KEYWORDS:

• Second relapse
• Hodgkins Lymphoma
• allogenic stem cell transplantation
• brentuximab
• nivolumab
• relapsed Hodgkin lymphoma

Declaration of interest

JO Armitage has served as a consultant for Conatus Pharmaceuticals and Samus Therapeutics, and is on the board of directors for Tesaro Bio, Inc. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed. Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was not funded.