The quest for a cure in follicular lymphoma

In this issue of Blood, Neelapu et al1 report for the first time long-term results of treatment of patients with indolent lymphoma with axicabtagene ciloleucel (axicel). In the ZUMA-5 trial 127 patients with follicular lymphoma (FL) and 31 patients with marginal zone lymphoma (MZL) were treated and the primary and secondary end points, as well as some additional exploratory analyses, are reported after a median follow-up of 47.1 months. Not surprisingly, the overall response rate (ORR), the primary end point, remained unchanged (94% in FL; 77% in MZL). Similar to the situation in diffuse large B -cell lymphoma (DLBCL), obtaining a complete response is also of importance in FL, as two-thirds of patients achieving a complete remission (CR) were still in remission at the data cutoff, and the median duration of response (DOR) was only 5 months in patients who reached a partial remission.