The benefit of rituximab maintenance after first-line (1L) bendamustine and rituximab (BR) in patients with mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) remains uncertain, with inconsistent results from the phase 2 MAINTAIN trial and several retrospective studies. We conducted a large retrospective study at 27 US and Canadian academic centers to examine the benefit of rituximab maintenance after BR. A total of 911 patients received 1L BR between 2010-2020, and 703 had an objective response and no evidence of disease progression at the 3-month post-BR landmark. Among those, 394 (56%) received rituximab maintenance and 309 (44%) did not, with largely similar baseline patient and disease characteristics. In the landmark analysis, rituximab maintenance was associated with improved event-free survival (EFS, median 49.9 vs 29.7 months, P 0.001) as well as overall survival (OS, median 109.5 vs 74.2 months, P 0.001). The EFS and OS benefits were observed across most of the subgroups. EFS and OS differences were statistically significant in those who achieved a complete response to 1L BR (n=590; median EFS 62.7 vs 31.1 months, P 0.001; median OS 136.1 vs 75.3 months, P 0.001), but the analysis in those who achieved a partial response to 1L BR was limited by the small sample size. These results provide additional evidence for the survival benefit of rituximab maintenance after BR in MCL and support its use in clinical trial design and routine practice.
Wang et al. (Thu,) studied this question.
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