Multicenter study of subcutaneous alemtuzumab administered at reduced dose in patients with fludarabine-relapsed/refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia: final analysis

Alemtuzumab (Campath-1H) for chronic lymphocytic leukemia: a drug in search of its optimal schedule

“…This was followed by injection every other week for 10 weeks, then every 4 weeks for four doses followed by four injections every 6 weeks. Using this schedule they report an overall response rate of 95%, with a complete response rate of 50.7%, and with lower toxicity compared to all previous reports [20]. Indeed, this article reports a promising schedule that needs to be taken into consideration seriously and should be tried out in a larger cohort of patients in order to verify the slow toxicity and high efficacy reported by the authors.…”

“…In this regard, alemtuzumab is still in search of its optimal schedule, but in the mean time it advances one more step forward with the study reported by Bezares and colleagues in this issue of Leukemia and Lymphoma [20].…”

“…In this regard, the study by Bezares et al, which appears in the current issue of Leukemia and Lymphoma, is intriguing, as they describe an interesting strategy to improve upon the toxicity profile by utilizing subcutaneous administration of alemtuzumab at a reduced dose, and during a prolonged period of time, for newly diagnosed patients with CLL [20]. They started therapy with a conventional dose of 30 mg, but only twice weekly instead of three times a week.…”

Alemtuzumab use in relapsed and refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia: a history and discussion of future rational use

“…These early encouraging signals led to a larger trial in untreated patients, with 26 PRs and 7 CRs observed in 41 patients (ORR = 80.5%) [Lundin et al 2002]. Subsequently, several phase II trials in the relapsed/refractory setting have been performed; those enrolling at least 20 patients are shown in Table 2 [Cortelezzi et al 2005[Cortelezzi et al , 2009Ferrajoli et al 2008;Karlsson et al 2009;Stilgenbauer et al 2009;Varghese et al 2010;Bezares et al 2011;Kaufman et al 2011;Gritti et al 2012]. The largest of these, the German CLL2H trial, enrolled 109 fludarabine refractory patients and found a 32% ORR, similar to the historic intravenous trials [Stilgenbauer et al 2009].…”

A phase I study of escalated dose subcutaneous alemtuzumab given weekly with rituximab in relapsed chronic lymphocytic leukemia/small lymphocytic lymphoma

“…Multiple groups have been interested in giving alemtuzumab weekly, sometimes in the context of lower doses to improve toxicity. [12][13][14] These studies have generally found preserved response rates but have not reported on efficacy in cytoreduction for SCT. This study assessed the safety and preliminary efficacy of escalated dose subcutaneous alemtuzumab in combination with rituximab in chronic lymphocytic leukemia.…”