October 07, 2025
3 min watch
In this video, Tycel Phillips, MD, discusses the current landscape of frontline treatment for advanced stage Hodgkin lymphoma and how standard of care for this disease differs internationally.
The findings were presented at the Society of Hematologic Oncology’s Annual Meeting.
The presentation focused on two clinical trials with different methods of “trying to manage this patient population, which typically consists of younger patients who … after treatment will have several years of life,” Phillips, associate professor in the department of hematology and hematopoietic cell transplantation at City of Hope, said.
“So, taking into account long-term toxicities is very important.”
The first trial analyzed PFS among newly diagnosed patients aged 12 years or older who received either standard-of-care brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris; Pfizer) with doxorubicin, vinblastine and dacarbazine (BV+AVD) or nivolumab (OPDIVO; Bristol Myers Squibb) with doxorubicin, vinblastine and dacarbazine (N+AVD). The researchers found that N+AVD was linked to improved PFS and reduced adverse effects compared with BV+AVD.
The second trial investigated the efficacy and tolerability of PET-guided brentuximab vedotin, etoposide, cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, dacarbazine and dexamethasone (BrECADD) among newly diagnosed adults compared with European standard-of-care bleomycin, etoposide, doxorubicin, cyclophosphamide, vincristine, procarbazine and prednisone (eBEACOPP). BrECADD was associated with lower treatment-related morbidity and improved PFS compared with eBEACOPP.
“We’ll likely still have the same sort of quasi-Cold War where in the U.S. we are using N+AVD and then other European countries will still use BrECADD. [We] will likely not have a universal standard of care unless there’s a randomized study between the two,” Phillips said.
