WASHINGTON, February 24, 2025 – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris®) to treat adults with large B-cell lymphoma, whose disease has returned or worsened despite two prior treatments.
When combined with lenalidomide and rituximab, the three-drug treatment demonstrated an improvement in survival and the time in remission for people with DLBCL who were not eligible for a stem cell transplant or CAR T-cell immunotherapy.
“With drugs like brentuximab, we can zero in on very specific vulnerabilities in cancer cells and limit the effects on healthy cells. The vulnerability that brentuximab attacks is present on many different types of blood cancer, making brentuximab particularly useful,” says Lore Gruenbaum, Ph.D., LLS Chief Scientific Officer.
This latest approval is the eighth for brentuximab across several different types of blood cancer in children and adults.
Brentuximab works by attaching to a protein called CD30, that is more common on certain types of blood cancer cells and then delivering chemotherapy directly to the cell. This targeted approach can not only make treatment more effective, but also better tolerated because CD30 is expressed on few normal cells, which means they are spared.
LLS research funding supported development of antibody drug conjugates
Brentuximab belongs to a drug class called antibody drug conjugates, or ADCs. LLS played a major role in developing ADCs, supporting the very first one, which was approved in 2000 to treat acute myeloid leukemia. ADCs have been called “biological missiles” because they are able to find and attack very specific cancer cells.
More than 50,000 patients in the U.S. have been treated with brentuximab since 2011 and over 140,000 have been treated around the world.
“At LLS, we continue to work toward better treatments and better access to treatment for patients and all those who will face a blood cancer diagnosis in the future,” says Dr. Gruenbaum.
If you or a loved one need personalized disease, treatment or support information, you can contact one of our Information Specialists: https://www.lls.org/support-resources/information-specialists