Trends in Therapeutic Utilization Among Patients With CLL: Results From the Lymphoma Coalition’s 2022 Global Patient Survey Presented at ASCO 2024

In this interview, Steve Kalloger, MSc, Lymphoma Coalition, shares the results from the Lymphoma Coalition’s 2022 Global Patient Survey regarding therapeutic utilization trends among patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). These findings were presented at the 2024 ASCO Annual Meeting.

Please introduce yourself by stating your name, title, organization, and relevant professional experience.

My name is Steve Kalloger, and I am the head of research for the Lymphoma Coalition.  I am a clinical research consultant with over 20 years of experience in cancer research, including clinical trials and health policy as both a scientist and a professor. I specialize in bringing multiple perspectives to issues faced by the cancer community.  With a deep foundation in statistical science and public health, I am involved in collaborative activities with various international groups in oncology.

Can you give some background about your study and what prompted you to undertake it?

Patients with CLL face a long disease course where a cure is unlikely to be attained.  Accordingly, patients who require treatment may be treated with different therapeutic regimens in order to prolong survival.  We were interested in exploring which therapies were used to treat CLL and how this varied across geographic regions.  With new classes of therapeutics being approved for use in CLL, we wanted to determine if the differing approval timelines across geographical regions were reflected in therapeutic utilization.

Can you briefly describe how the study was conducted?

Every 2 years, the Lymphoma Coalition executes a global, cross-sectional survey for patients with lymphoma or CLL.  The survey consists of over 100 questions and serves to gather data on the experiences and outcomes of the aforementioned patients (and their caregivers).  For this study, we focused on patients with CLL and the treatments that they received.

What were the main findings of your study? 

Of the 1289 patients who responded to the survey, we found that nearly half (49%) of patients with CLL had received treatment.  The most utilized therapeutic regimen among those who received treatment was chemo-immunotherapy utilizing rituximab (42%).  Those who had targeted molecular therapy were 32%, with 18% and 16% receiving only immunotherapy or chemotherapy, respectively. Europe had significantly higher rates of chemo-immunotherapy utilizing rituximab compared to the North American and Asia-Pacific regions (P = .01).  Targeted therapy trended toward higher rates of utilization in North America relative to the other geographic regions examined, but this finding was not statistically significant.

Looking ahead, what potential impact do you hope your findings will have on the standard of care and/or treatment for patients with CLL?

We advocate for the propagation of novel therapeutic strategies that are both efficacious and preserve health-related quality of life (HRQoL) across the globe.  Although this data is 2 years old, our findings demonstrate that there is some heterogeneity in how CLL is treated across geographic regions.  We are currently exploring this in newly acquired data from our 2024 Global Patient Survey and will be executing a follow-up study to determine how the heterogeneity found in 2022 has changed in 2 years.  

We suspect that increasing costs of health care delivery coupled with altered health care priorities post-pandemic will delay the adoption of novel therapeutics, which may lead to increasing differences in outcomes across geographic regions.  We are hopeful that our research will illuminate these differences so that health care providers can ensure that all patients with CLL are getting the best care possible.

Reference

Kalloger S, Watson A, Sajkowski S, Warwick L.Therapeutic utilization in chronic lymphocytic leukemia: a cross-sectional analysis of the Lymphoma Coalition’s 2022 Global Patient Survey. Presented at the ASCO Annual Meeting. May 31 – June 4, 2024; Chicago, IL. Abstract e19026