Yan Leyfman, Medical Oncologist, Co-Founder and Executive Director of MedNews Week, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“R/R DLBCL has always been a race against biology-and time.
We’ve relied on salvage chemoimmunotherapy to get patients to ASCT, but the reality is sobering:
- Many never achieve a sufficient response
- Others progress before transplant
- Cure slips out of reach
Enter epcoritamab (CD3×CD20 bispecific) -not as a last resort, but integrated upfront into salvage.
In EPCORE NHL-2 (Arm 4), adding epcoritamab to R-DHAX/C didn’t just improve response rates-it changed the trajectory:
- 79% ORR / 69% CR in a high-risk, largely refractory population
- 55% bridged to ASCT (the real endpoint that matters)
- Durable control: 59% PFS, 76% OS at 3 years
- Manageable safety: mostly low-grade CRS, predictable cytopenias
Why this matters:
We’re no longer just ‘debulking’ disease-we’re biologically reprogramming the response with T-cell engagement during salvage, when it matters most.
This challenges the traditional sequencing:
- Instead of saving bispecifics for later lines
- We may need to move them earlier—to rescue transplant eligibility
The paradigm shift:
From ՛Can we get them to transplant?՛ to ՛How do we maximize who actually gets there?՛
Epcoritamab + chemo may be one of the first regimens to meaningfully expand the curative pool in R/R DLBCL.”
Title: Epcoritamab plus rituximab, dexamethasone, cytarabine, oxaliplatin/carboplatin induces deep and durable responses in transplant-eligible patients with relapsed or refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma: results from the EPCORE NHL-2 trial
Authors: Pau Abrisqueta, Yasmin H. Karimi, Daniel Morillo, Raúl Cordoba, Tycel Phillips, Sven de Vos, Marcel Nijland, Fritz Offner, Per-Ola Andersson, Joshua Brody, Chan Y. Cheah, Pilar Gomez Prieto, Mats Hellström, Judit Meszaros Jørgensen, David Lewis, Kim M. Linton, Gerardo Musuraca, Liwei Wang, Jennifer Marek, Kojo Osei-Bonsu, Malene Risum, Lorenzo Falchi
Read the Full Article.
Other Articles Featuring Yan Leyfman on OncoDaily.