Precision medicine in follicular lymphoma: Focus on predictive biomarkers.

Current care for patients with follicular lymphoma (FL) offers most of them long-term survival. Improving it further will require careful patient selection. This review focuses on predictive biomarkers (ie, those whose outcome correlations depend on the treatment strategy) in FL, because awareness of what patient subsets benefit most or least from each therapy will help in this task. The first part of this review aims to summarize what biomarkers are predictive in FL, the magnitude of the effect and the quality of the evidence. We find predictive biomarkers in the setting of (a) indication of active treatment, (b) front-line induction (use of anthracyline-based regimens, CHOP vs bendamustine, addition of rituximab), (c) post-(front-line)induction (rituximab maintenance, radioimmunotherapy), and (d) relapse (hematopoietic stem cell transplant) and targeted agents. The second part of this review discusses the challenges of precision medicine in FL, including (a) cost, (b) clinical relevance considerations, and (c) difficulties over the broad implementation of biomarkers. We then provide our view on what biomarkers may become used in the next few years. We conclude by underscoring the importance of assessing the potential predictiveness of available biomarkers to improve patient care but also that there is a long road ahead before reaching their broad implementation due to remaining scientific, technological, and economic hurdles.

Systematic review of staging bone marrow involvement in B cell lymphoma by flow cytometry.

The clinical relevance of flow cytometry (FC)-based bone marrow involvement (BMI) in B cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma (B-NHL) is not well established. We conducted a systematic review of MEDLINE regarding the use of FC to establish BMI in B-NHL to determine the prevalence of BMI by FC, to understand the interrelation between FC and bone marrow biopsy (BMB), and to explore the prognostic impact of BMI by FC. Relevant exclusion criteria included publication before 2010. Eleven publications (of 18 screened) were included, with 2803 patients involved. Relevant methodological details were often unreported. The prevalence of BMI by FC varied based on histological subtypes included. The median kappa agreement between BMB and FC was 0.68 and the type of discordance (FC+/BMB- vs. FC-/BMB+) was highly variable across studies. Only 4 studies (all in diffuse large B cell lymphoma) assessed the prognostic impact of BMI by FC. Two found a worse prognosis for patients with FC+/BMB- than those without BMI. To conclude, studies assessing BMI by FC are retrospective, of low methodological quality and with heterogeneous findings.

Recent developments and persisting challenges in the prevention and treatment of venous thromboembolism in patients with hematological malignancies.

Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is a common complication of cancer. Its treatment is challenging because of the high risk for both VTE recurrence and bleeding. Evidence is particularly scarce for patients with hematological malignancies. This review aims to summarize new developments in anticoagulation for the prevention and treatment of VTE in patients with active cancer, largely derived from the formal introduction of direct anticoagulants (DOACs) in this population. We then offer our recommendations for the thromboprophylaxis and treatment of VTE in patients with hematological disorders (mature lymphoid disorders, plasma cell disorders, myeloproliferative neoplasms, myelodysplastic syndrome and acute leukemia/stem cell transplant). We conclude by emphasizing the lack of high-quality evidence in a majority of these settings, caution about the use of DOACs in clinical situations where evidence is lacking and, finally, note the importance of involving patients in the decision-making process.