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Purpose Phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) signaling is critical for the proliferation and survival of malignant B cells. Copanlisib, a pan-class I PI3K inhibitor with predominant activity against PI3K-α and -δ isoforms, has demonstrated efficacy and a manageable safety profile in patients with indolent lymphoma. Patients and Methods In this phase II study, 142 patients with relapsed or refractory indolent lymphoma after two or more lines of therapy were enrolled to receive copanlisib 60 mg intravenously on days 1, 8, and 15 of a 28-day cycle. The primary end point was objective response rate; secondary end points included duration of response, progression-free survival, and overall survival. In addition, safety and gene expression were evaluated. Results Median age was 63 years (range, 25 to 82 years), and patients had received a median of three (range, two to nine) prior regimens. The objective response rate was 59% (84 of 142 patients); 12% of patients achieved a complete response. Median time to response was 53 days. Median duration of response was 22.6 months, median progression-free survival was 11.2 months, and median overall survival had not yet been reached. The most frequent treatment-emergent adverse events were transient hyperglycemia (all grades, 50%; grade 3 or 4, 41%) and transient hypertension (all grades, 30%; grade 3, 24%). Other grade ≥3 events included decreased neutrophil count (24%) and lung infection (15%). High response rates to copanlisib were associated with high expression of PI3K/B-cell receptor signaling pathway genes. Conclusion PI3K-α and -δ inhibition by copanlisib demonstrated significant efficacy and a manageable safety profile in heavily pretreated patients with relapsed or refractory indolent lymphoma.

BackgroundCopanlisib is a pan-class I phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase inhibitor with predominant activity against the α- and δ-isoforms.Patients and methodsThis phase II study evaluated the response rate of copanlisib administered intravenously on days 1, 8, and 15 of a 28-day cycle, in patients with indolent or aggressive malignant lymphoma. Archival tumor tissues were used for immunohistochemistry, gene-expression profiling, and mutation analysis.ResultsThirty-three patients with indolent lymphoma and 51 with aggressive lymphoma received copanlisib. Follicular lymphoma (48.5%) and peripheral T-cell lymphoma (33.3%) were the most common histologic subtypes. Most patients (78.6%) had received prior rituximab and 54.8% were rituximab-refractory. Median duration of treatment was 23 and 8 weeks in the indolent and aggressive cohorts, respectively (overall range 2–138). Eighty patients were evaluated for efficacy. The objective response rate was 43.7% (14/32) in the indolent cohort and 27.1% (13/48) in the aggressive cohort; median progression-free survival was 294 days (range 0–874) and 70 days (range 0–897), respectively; median duration of response was 390 days (range 0–825) and 166 days (range 0–786), respectively. Common adverse events included hyperglycemia (57.1%; grade ≥3, 23.8%), hypertension (54.8%; grade ≥3, 40.5%), and diarrhea (40.5%; grade ≥3, 4.8%), all generally manageable. Neutropenia occurred in 28.6% of patients (grade 4, 11.9%). Molecular analyses showed enhanced antitumor activity in tumors with upregulated phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase pathway gene expression.ConclusionIntravenous copanlisib demonstrated promising efficacy and manageable toxicity in heavily pretreated patients with various subtypes of indolent and aggressive malignant lymphoma. Subtype-specific studies of copanlisib in patients with follicular, peripheral T-cell, and mantle cell lymphomas are ongoing.This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov number NCT01660451 (Part A).

On behalf of the German Low Grade Lymphoma Study Group (GLSG) and the European MCL Network. Background: There is no generally established prognostic classification system for patients with mantle cell lymphoma (MCL), as the International Prognostic Index (IPI) and the Follicular Lymphoma International Prognostic Index (FLIPI) have been developed based on data of patients with diffuse large cell and follicular lymphoma, respectively. Methods: The data of 455 patients with advanced stage MCL treated first-line within three clinical trials of GLSG and European MCL Network have been analyzed to clarify the prognostic relevance of IPI and FLIPI and to derive a new prognostic index of overall survival (OS). Age, sex, ECOG performance status, Ann Arbor stage, B-symptoms, number of extranodal sites, number of involved nodal areas, tumor size, serum LDH activity, WBC count, platelet count, hemoglobin, albumin, β2-microglobulin and cell proliferation (Ki-67) were considered as candidate prognostic factors. Statistical methods included Kaplan-Meier estimates and logrank test for the validation of IPI and FLIPI and multiple Cox regression with backward variable selection for the derivation of the new prognostic index. Results: IPI showed a significant impact on OS, but low-intermediate and high-intermediate risk groups comprised more than two thirds of the patients and were not well separated. According to the FLIPI, only 6% of the patients were classified as low risk and almost two thirds of the patients as high risk, and low and intermediate risk groups were not separated. Four of the candidate prognostic factors were independently associated with OS, namely age, ECOG performance status, LDH and WBC count. The relative risk was 1.42 (95% confidence interval 1.18 to 1.72, p = 0.0002) for an increased age by ten years, 2.01 (1.19 to 3.39, p = 0.0088) for an ECOG greater than one, 1.51 (1.13 to 2.02, p = 0.0059) for a 2 fold elevation of LDH and 2.56 (1.66 to 3.95, p < 0.0001) for a 10 fold increase of WBC count. According to these four parameters, patients could be classified into a low risk (44% of the patients, median OS not reached), an intermediate risk (35%, median OS 51 months), and a high risk group (21%, median OS 29 months). Discussion: IPI and FLIPI showed only modest prognostic discrimination in our external validation data set of patients with advanced stage MCL. In contrast, age, ECOG performance status, LDH and WBC were identified as independent prognostic factors of OS, and three reasonably sized and well separated risk groups were defined. With four clinical prognostic factors readily determined in clinical routine, our new prognostic index (MIPI) is superior to the IPI. Bootstrap validation confirmed the separation of three risk groups, but external validation is still needed. The MIPI may prove to be an important tool to facilitate risk-adapted treatment decisions for patients with advanced stage MCL.

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Protein expression alterations unrelated to an investigated phenotype are accumulated in most cell line models during establishment. Performing a whole proteome screening of lymphoma cell lines, we established a method to reduce the influence of protein expression unrelated to the distinct investigated phenotype. In 2-D PAGE, the comprehensive analysis of a large number of protein spots would be simplified by pooling cell line samples of the investigated phenotype. Applying this pooling approach, unrelated alterations of single samples are 'muted' by dilution. Analysing two different lymphoma subtypes (follicular and mantle cell lymphoma) by this method, spots originating in only single cell lines were reduced by 72% (650/900), whereas even modestly altered expression of protein spots detected in all lines were reliably detected in the pooled protein gels. We conclude that our pooling approach is a preferable approach to reliably detect a common protein expression pattern and may even allow proteomic analysis of clinical samples with limited amounts of sample material, even with minimal cell numbers as low as 1 x 10(6).