Combinational Impact of HDAC and mTOR Associated with Promising Results

Release Date: 22-Nov-2020

For patients suffering from relapsed/refractory Hodgkin lymphoma, vorinostat and an mTOR inhibitor combination were observed to deliver positive impact in the form of high response rate on the patients. The study was conducted for novel drug combination as the already available therapies for the cancer patients was showing 5 year survival rate as low as 30%.

There is a high unmet demand of the patients suffering from relapsed/refractory Hodgkin lymphoma besides having brentuximab, which is a a CD30 antibody-drug conjugate, and the programmed cell death 1 (PD-1) inhibitors pembrolizumab and nivolumab. Their lead compound was tested in a nonrandomized, open-label, dose-escalation phase 1 study. In total, 40 patients were enrolled in the clinical research study. The enrolled patients were undergone previous treatments such as brentuximab vendotin, autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), and allogeneic HSCT.

The patients who received vorinostat plus siroliumus, the overall complete response as well as partial response was found to be 27%. The median progression-free survival rate observed was 5.8 months and median follow-up was 43.3 months. In other group of enrolled patients who received vorinostat plus everolimus, complete response rate as well as partial response rate was observed to be 11% and 22% respectively. Some of the adverse effects that were observed in the patients who received HDAC and an mTOR inhibitor were neutropenia, thrombocytopenia, and anemia. It was concluded by the researchers that the combined results of HDAC and mTOR inhibition was encouraging to take further.