Hope After Salvage Therapy Fails: Novel Agents for Relapsed/Refractory Hodgkin Lymphoma

Hodgkin lymphoma is a highly curable malignancy, with an excellent prognosis. However, around 10% to 25% of patients will have primary refractory or relapsed disease, despite using risk-adapted strategies. The standard of care for patients with relapsed/refractory Hodgkin lymphoma has been cytoreduction using salvage chemotherapy, followed by high-dose chemotherapy and autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (AHSCT). Studies have shown that AHSCT produces a durable response rate of 50%, and that patients achieve a complete response with salvage chemotherapy. The outcomes for patients who do not respond to salvage chemotherapy or relapse after an AHSCT have been poor, with a median survival of 25 months. However, with the approval of novel agents over the last decade, the outcomes for patients with relapsed/refractory Hodgkin lymphoma have improved significantly. In this article, we present a case of a patient with relapsed Hodgkin lymphoma who responded to salvage chemotherapy incorporating brentuximab vedotin, a novel agent.