Pathogenesis, Diagnosis and Treatment of Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia: Exciting Times

In the final paper, Cramer et al. [4] ‘State of the art treatment and novel agents in CLL’ give an overview on the current treatment options in CLL, in light of the many new drugs that have been approved recently or are about to be approved. For physically fit patients, chemoimmunotherapy with fludarabine, cyclophosphamide, and rituximab remains the current standard therapy. For unfit patients, treatment with an anti-CD20 antibody (obinutuzumab, rituximab, or ofatumumab) plus a milder chemotherapy (chlorambucil) may be applied. Several new agents (e.g., ibrutinib, idelalisib, obinutuzumab) hold the potential to improve the outcome of CLL patients. However, their optimal use (in terms of combination, sequence, and duration) is unknown. Therefore, CLL patients should be treated in clinical trials testing these new agents whenever possible (for more information visit www.dcllsg.de). In our new section ‘Ongoing Clinical Trials’ (see page 69) Kirsten Fischer describes the CLL14 trial that will test combinations of new agents (obinutuzumab, venetoclax) in CLL. This trial might lead the way to chemotherapy-free treatments of CLL.