TY - JOUR T1 - Improved clinical outcome in a randomized phase II study of anti-PD-1 camrelizumab plus decitabine in relapsed/refractory Hodgkin lymphoma JF - Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer JO - J Immunother Cancer DO - 10.1136/jitc-2021-002347 VL - 9 IS - 4 SP - e002347 AU - Yang Liu AU - Chunmeng Wang AU - Xiang Li AU - Liang Dong AU - Qingming Yang AU - Meixia Chen AU - Fengxia Shi AU - Malcolm Brock AU - Miao Liu AU - Qian Mei AU - Jiejie Liu AU - Jing Nie AU - Weidong Han Y1 - 2021/04/01 UR - http://jitc.bmj.com/content/9/4/e002347.abstract N2 - Background Programmed death-1 (PD-1) blockade monotherapy induced durable remission in a subset of patients with relapsed/refractory classical Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL). We asked whether the anti-PD-1 agent, camrelizumab, combined with the DNA demethylating agent, decitabine, improves progression-free survival (PFS) in patients with relapsed/refractory cHL over camrelizumab alone.Methods This extended follow-up of an ongoing randomized phase II trial analyzed PFS among patients enrolled from January 2017 through July 2018. Sixty-one patients with relapsed/refractory cHL who were clinically naïve to PD-1 blockade and had received ≥2 previous therapies were randomized 1:2 to receive either camrelizumab (200 mg) monotherapy or camrelizumab (200 mg, day 8) combined with decitabine (10 mg/day, days 1–5) every 3 weeks.Results With a median follow-up of 34.5 months, complete remission was 79% (95% CI 63% to 90%) in the decitabine-plus-camrelizumab group versus 32% (95% CI 13% to 57%) in the camrelizumab group (p=0.001). Median duration of response was not reached in the decitabine-plus-camrelizumab group, with an estimated 63% (95% CI 46% to 75%) of patients maintaining a response at 24 months. Median PFS with decitabine-plus-camrelizumab therapy was 35.0 months (95% CI not reached) and 15.5 months (95% CI 8.4 to 22.7 months) with camrelizumab monotherapy (HR, 0.46; 95% CI 0.21 to 1.01; p=0.02). Female gender, lower tumor burden, and fewer previous therapies were favorable prognostic factors for durable remission with camrelizumab monotherapy. The PFS benefits of decitabine-plus-camrelizumab versus camrelizumab were observed in most subgroups, especially in patients with relative larger tumor burdens and those treated with ≥3 prior therapies. After decitabine-plus-camrelizumab treatment, the percentage increase of circulating peripheral central memory T-cells correlated with both improved clinical response and PFS, suggesting a putative biomarker of decitabine-plus-camrelizumab therapy for cHL.Conclusions Decitabine-plus-camrelizumab results in longer PFS compared with camrelizumab alone in patients with relapsed/refractory cHL.Trial registration numbers NCT02961101 and NCT03250962.Data are available upon reasonable request. The data sets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. ER -