A Phase II Study of Nivolumab in Patients with Relapsed or Refractory Peripheral T-Cell Lymphoma

Introduction: Peripheral T-cell lymphomas (PTCL) are a heterogeneous group of mature aggressive T-cell non-Hodgkin lymphomas. They carry a worse prognosis for most subtypes compared with their B-cell counterparts. Despite the recent approval of newer therapies, the response rate and duration of clinical benefit is short and the outlook for patients with relapsed/refractory (RR) PTCL remains poor. There is therefore a need for novel effective therapies in PTCL. Targeting the profoundly immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment (TME) in PTCL is one such approach. Preclinical data show that malignant cells in PTCL overexpress programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1), which signals via programmed death-1 (PD-1) receptor, and provides an inhibitory signal further suppressing antitumor immunity. PD-1/PD-L1/2 interactions in PTCL are particularly complicated as both the receptor and ligands can be expressed on the malignant T-cell. While the use of anti-PD-1 blocking antibodies has shown remarkable efficacy particularly in relapsed Hodgkin lymphoma, only a small number of patients with PTCL have been treated with checkpoint blockade. We conducted an investigator-initiated phase 2 prospective study of single-agent nivolumab for RR PTCL. We report here the results of the prespecified interim analysis.

Study design and patient selection: Nivolumab was given at a flat dose of 240 mg intravenously (IV) every 2 weeks for 8 cycles then 480 mg IV every 4 weeks starting cycle 9. The primary objective was to assess the overall response rate (ORR) defined as proportion of subjects achieving either a partial response (PR) or complete response (CR) within 12 cycles of treatment. Secondary objectives were to assess safety and tolerability of nivolumab in PTCL and to assess progression-free survival (PFS), duration of response (DOR) and overall survival (OS). Pre-planned sample size was 39, assuming that an ORR of 10% or less would be considered negative and an ORR of 30% or greater would warrant further study. We used a one-stage design with an interim analysis (upon enrolling 12 subjects) based on a Simon optimal design to assess efficacy. This design had a 90% power with a 1-sided 10% level test. The Duffy and Santner method was utilized to determine confidence intervals for the ORR. Kaplan-Meier methods were used to assess PFS, OS, and DOR. This study was sponsored by Bristol-Myers Squibb (NCT03075553).

Results: Twelve patients who received at least one cycle of nivolumab were included in this interim analysis. Patient characteristics are illustrated in table 1. Half (6/12) of the patients had angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma (AITL), 3/12 had PTCL, not otherwise specified (NOS), one had ALK negative anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALK- ALCL). Most (11/12) were advanced stage (stage 4), had extranodal disease and half of the patients had received a prior autologous transplant. The ORR was 33% (4/12) (95% CI: 12.3 - 63.7%): 1 CR seen in ALK-ALCL; 2 PR, 1 in PTCL, NOS and 1 in enteropathy associated T-cell lymphoma; 1 CR in AITL. The median DOR was 3.6 months (95% CI: 1.9-6.9). The median PFS for all 12 patients was short at 1.9 months (95% CI: 1.5-8.7); median OS was 7.9 months (95% CI: 3.4-10.8) (Panel A). Hyperprogressive disease (defined as dramatic progression within 1 cycle of treatment) occurred in 4 patients. Observed grade 3 and higher adverse events (AEs) were as follows: non-hematologic AEs in 5/12 (41.7%), while hematologic AEs were seen in 3/12 (25%) patients.

Conclusions: Nivolumab had modest clinical activity in patients with R/R PTCL and the study met the criteria at interim analysis to continue accrual. However, due to the high number of patients with hyperprogressive disease, the moderate activity of the drug, and short DOR, a decision was made to halt the study. These findings likely reflect the distinct biology of PTCL and should be considered when designing future studies using checkpoint inhibitors in these diseases. Further studies are indicated using nivolumab in combination (rather than a single-agent) and use of biomarkers to better predict the responders.

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