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Cambridge, England (ots/PRNewswire) – - Blood Marrow Normalised in 31% (Versus 2%) of Patients, With Manageable Side-Effects

Nearly a third (31%) of all bendamustine-treated patients saw all clinical evidence of their advanced chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) disappear when used as a first-line treatment option, according to the results of a large new multicentre phase III study published online by the Journal of Clinical Oncology today. Only 2% of patients treated with chlorambucil (the standard treatment) in the study achieved the same results.(1)

Professor Wolfgang U. Knauf of the Onkologische Gemeinschaftspraxis, Frankfurter Diakonie Kliniken, Frankfurt, Germany, who led the study, said: “CLL is the most common form of adult leukaemia in the Western world. It is also incurable, and so the goal of treatment is to stabilise the cancer over the long-term by extending periods of remission, during which patients can lead practically normal lives, symptom-free. Existing treatment options are limited for those with advanced CLL, but our new study shows that bendamustine couples significantly better efficacy with a manageable toxicity profile, so offering patients the hope of a better quality of life, for longer than traditional treatments.”

CLL is a slowly progressing blood and bone marrow form of the disease presenting mostly in the elderly (average age of diagnosis is 68)(2). Blood cells that are normally produced in a controlled way lose this control and an increasing number of abnormal leukaemic lymphocytes circulate in the blood, eventually replacing the normal white cells, red cells and platelets in the bone marrow. Bendamustine has a unique mode of action compared with other cytotoxic agents. This means that it is able to kill cancer cells that have become resistant to previous chemotherapies(3) and may return the blood marrow to normal, resulting in a complete response and thus a disappearance of all signs and symptoms of the disease.

In the study, patients treated with the chemotherapy agent bendamustine (162 of the total 319 patients) achieved a median progression-free survival of 21.6 months, compared to only 8.3 months for chlorambucil (p

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