Treatment of Patients With Diffuse Large B Cell Lymphoma Who Are Not Suitable for Anthracycline Containing Chemotherapy

The incidence of DLBCL is increasing and with an expanding elderly population, the incidence will continue to rise. Given that about 40% of cases of DLBCL occur in patients aged over 70 and the number of co-mobilities increases with age, research to investigate the optimal treatment of DLBCL in this group of patients is needed. R-CHOP remains the standard of care for the majority of patients with DLBCL, anthracycline use is precluded in a proportion of these patients by a high risk of developing cardiotoxicity, especially congestive cardiac failure. Currently there is no standard of care for patients who are unfit for anthracycline treatment. It has been routine to omit the doxorubicin from R-CHOP, giving R-CVP instead. However the outcome for patients treated with R-CVP is poor and attempts have been made to replace the doxorubicin with alternative agents. The trial will compare an experimental arm consisting of Inotuzumab Ozogamicin added to the standard immunochemotherapy regimen of rituximab, cyclophosphamide, vincristine and prednisolone (R-CVP) with the control arm of gemcitabine added to the same combination (Gem-R-CVP).