Brian Koffman, MDCM, on Incremental Research Progress in Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia

“In CLL, the name of the game for the last couple of years has been how do we combine? How do we sequence? And we'll be learning more about what makes sense? What are the best combinations? What are the best sequences? And again, this is incremental changes, incremental improvement in our knowledge, nothing game changing at this point, but those are the areas that I'm excited about.”

CLL Society is focused on advocating for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). Its cofounder, Brian Koffman, MDCM, DCFP, FCFP, DABFP, MSEd, has a unique perspective with CLL, having been a clinician who was diagnosed with CLL himself.

CGTLive spoke with Koffman, who serves as cofounder, executive vice president, and chief medical officer of CLL society, to learn more about the unmet needs that remain to be addressed for patients with CLL, including patients who are relapsed and refractory to standard of care approved treatments. He discussed new research he is excited to see more of in the field and that was discussed at the 2023 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, held December 9-12, in San Diego, California.

These topics included sequencing and combination therapies, bispecific antibodies, long-term durability data on chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies, and new molecular pathways. Koffman compared the 2023 ASH meeting, which did not have many updates on CLL research, to previous ASH meetings in which there were bigger news items and data updates being presented. However, he stressed that progress is continuing in the field, and it is just more incremental this year compared to previous years of explosive progress.

Click here to read more coverage of the ASH 2023 meeting.