Is there a place for the combination of brentuximab vedotin and bendamustine in treatment of patients with relapsed/refractory Hodgkin lymphoma?

This study by O’Connor and colleagues investigated the combination of brentuximab vedotin plus bendamustine in patients with relapsed/refractory Hodgkin lymphoma (HL). Both drugs have been studied as single agents in this setting; brentuximab vedotin was found to have an overall response rate (ORR) of 74% and complete response (CR) rate of 32% in a pivotal phase II trial (1). For single agent bendamustine an ORR of 53% and CR rate of 33% was reported (2). The clinical rationale of this study was to combine the two agents to increase their efficacy. However, no preclinical rationale was provided for this combination in this manuscript.