Immunomedics says that adding 90Y-epratuzumab following R-CHOP improves patients' response

US biopharmaceutical company Immunomedics (Nasdaq: IMMU) reports that adding two doses of epratuzumab labeled with the radioisotope, yttrium-90 (90Y), to a combination of rituximab and CHOP chemotherapy (R-CHOP), the standard of care for patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), appeared to improve elderly patients' responses to treatment.

DLBCL is the most common type of aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), with around 20,000 new patients diagnosed each year in the USA. Although the standard therapy for DLBCL is R-CHOP, elderly patients who fail R-CHOP have a poor outcome. Due to advanced age, chemo-resistant disease, and/or concurrent co-morbid medical conditions, a significant percentage of these patients are not eligible for high-dose salvage therapy or stem cell transplant. Consequently, there is a need for an alternative therapy for high-risk patients with a lower chance of being cured with standard R-CHOP.

Epratuzumab is a humanized antibody that binds to the CD22 receptor on B cells. In various clinical trials, epratuzumab was found to be active as an unlabeled antibody in patients with NHL or lupus. Previous clinical studies have also demonstrated that repeated administration of small doses of 90Y-epratuzumab (fractionated RAIT) produced high rates of durable responses in NHL patients.1