New Phase 3 Clinical Trial Opens for Pediatric, Adult Hodgkin Lymphoma Patients

While an estimated 95% of “younger” patients diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma are still alive and into survivorship within five years of their diagnosis, their long-term health suffers from the aggressive treatment needed to fight the disease.

“Many patients will develop long-term complications due to therapy,” says Kara Kelly, MD, Chair of the Department of Pediatric Oncology at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. “They will develop second cancers… or very severe cardiovascular problems. When you look at patients long term, over 20-30 years, their mortality rate increases considerably. There is a great need to cut down some of the intensity of the therapy and look at the treatments to maintain high levels of long-term survival.”

To help determine whether immunotherapy can help reduce the toxicities and complications that stem from current courses of treatment, Roswell Park is offering a new Phase 3 clinical trial for adult and pediatric patients with stage 1 or 2 Hodgkin lymphoma.

The AHOD2131 trial is sponsored by the Children’s Oncology Group but was developed in conjunction with “all adult cooperative research groups in North America,” Dr. Kelly says. “Our goal is to show that, by incorporating immunotherapy into the treatment protocol, we can cut down the number of cycles of conventional chemotherapy, and especially radiation therapy, which both contribute quite considerably to long-term toxicity of the treatment approaches.”