Targeted therapy in relapsed classical hodgkin lymphoma

Although frontline treatment of advanced Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) produces high cure rates, disease either will not respond to or will relapse after initial therapy in approximately a quarter of patients. Many patients with disease relapse can be successfully salvaged with second-line chemotherapy followed by autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT). Patients whose disease relapses after ASCT are rarely cured. A unique pathophysiologic feature of HL is that the malignant Reed-Sternberg (HRS) cell is rare and resides within a microenvironment of inflammatory and immune-related cells. The recent FDA approval of the anti-CD30 antibody-drug conjugate brentuximab vedotin (BV) for patients with either primary refractory HL or those whose disease relapses after ASCT represents a major advance in therapy. This article focuses on BV and other novel agents that target the HRS cell surface, intracellular signaling pathways, and tumor microenvironment.