The study that we have been presenting in this meeting with blinatumomab in relapsed and refractory diffuse aggressive B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma was developed in a very peculiar setting because the front line treatment nowadays of non-Hodgkin lymphoma is very effective but the proportion of patients who eventually relapse do very poorly. Particularly this is true when considering patients that do not respond to salvage first therapy and the outcome for these patients is very poor. So this was the setting in which blinatumomab was tested and it was remarkable that with a reasonable safety profile this treatment was able to achieve 37% overall response rate and these patients could proceed to consolidate this response with an autologous or even an allogenic stem cell transplant. So this opens the door to a really innovative treatment chance for these unlucky patients.
What does this mean for doctors?
That means that we have the opportunity to propose an innovative treatment choice that is in the line of the new monoclonal antibody based therapy and the expanded immunotherapy in refractory relapsed diseases. So this is a very practical and feasible approach for the future of these very aggressive diseases.