OBJECTIVE: To qualitatively understand patients’ experience of being treated with subcutaneous epcoritamab for relapsed/refractory non-Hodgkin B-cell lymphoma (R/R B-NHL).
METHODS: A subset of patients in the phase 1/2 EPCORE NHL-1 (NCT03625037) trial of subcutaneous epcoritamab monotherapy for R/R B-NHL participated in interviews after completing their cycle 10 visit or upon early termination from the trial. In-depth, one-to-one telephone interviews were conducted and transcribed. Subsequently, a thematic analysis of the data identified dominant themes in patient reports.
RESULTS: Twenty patients across 3 countries participated in the interviews, with 50% being male and a mean age (range) of 66 years (21–84). Patients had either large B-cell lymphoma (n=16/20; 80%) or follicular lymphoma (n=4/20; 20%). Most patients were previously treated with chemotherapy (n=19/20; 95.0%) and 55% (n=11/20) had prior chimeric antigen receptor redirected T-cell therapy. Of those who reported ≥1 symptoms at baseline, 88.2% (n=15/17) reported improvement in ≥1 symptoms, with fatigue (n=10/14; 71.4%), tumor size (n=5/7; 71.4%), and body pain (n=5/7; 71.4%) most frequently reported. At the time of the interviews, all patients reported that current symptoms were either mild or nonexistent compared with their baseline symptoms. More than half of patients reported that subcutaneous epcoritamab had a positive impact on their daily activities (n=11/18; 61.1%). In addition, some patients experienced positive impacts on their physical (n=7/16; 43.8%), emotional (n=7/18; 38.9%), and social functioning (n=7/17; 41.2%). Most patients (n=16/20; 80.0%) reported being either “very satisfied” or “satisfied” with subcutaneous epcoritamab as a treatment for R/R B-NHL.
CONCLUSIONS: R/R B-NHL patients treated with subcutaneous epcoritamab reported improvements in symptoms associated with their disease, positive impacts of treatment on their functioning, and satisfaction with treatment. These results present a direct patient perspective of the changes experienced over the course of treatment and complement what was observed in the validated patient-reported outcomes instruments used in the clinical trial.
