Efficiency and Safety of Brentuximab Vedotine as a Salvage Treatment Before Autologous Stem Cell Transplantation in Patients With Relapsed or Refractory Classic Hodgkin Lymphoma: Retrospective Study

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Background There is no strong evidence supporting brentuximab vedotine (BV) efficacy as a salvage regimen for relapsed/refractory Hodgkin’s lymphoma (R/R HL) patients before autologous hematopoietic cell transplantation (auto‐HCT). Methods We performed multicenter retrospective analysis of efficiency of treatment with the BV monotherapy as salvage regimen versus standard salvage chemotherapy (sCT) in 44 patients with R/R HL from a high‐risk group. Results Twenty‐six patients (59.1%) had primary refractory disease. Nineteen patients (43.2%) received BV salvage treatment before auto‐HCT, and 12 (63.6%) achieved complete response (CR) that counts 27.3% of the whole study cohort. There was no difference in the CR rate, 2‐year progression‐free survival, and 2‐year overall survival after BV salvage and sCT (63.2% vs. 60%, respectively, p = 0.35; 88.2% vs. 80.7%, p = 0.655; 94.1% vs. 100%, p = 0.735, respectively). There was no difference in neuropathy of all grades, including Grades 2‐3 between groups. Conclusions The BV as a salvage treatment showed quite high efficiency. Despite a worse clinical characteristic of the BV group, there were no significant differences in the outcomes of the auto‐HCT with respect to the salvage regimen (BV versus sCT) used before auto‐HCT. Our results suggest that BV before auto‐HCT in patients refractory to standard 2nd line treatment equalizes their prognosis to the patient sensitive to standard CT with the same tolerance and toxicity.