Seven-hundred forty-seven patients with CLL and TP53 aberrations treated in first line with ibrutinib between January 2016 and December 2020 in 157 hematology centers were included in this analysis. One-hundred patients were previously reported (24). Data cut-off was set to May 2022; therefore, all patients have a minimum potential follow-up period of at least 16 months. The median follow-up (FU) was 26.0 months (IQR 13.8-40.6), the median FU for patients without events was 35.1 months (IQR 25.4-48.6).
The baseline characteristics are shown in Table 1. The median time from diagnosis was 11 months; median age was 71 years (range 32-95 years); 93.2% of the cases had ECOG performance status (PS) 0-1. Rai stages 0-II and III-IV were reported in 54.9% and in 45.1% of the patients, respectively; previous atrial fibrillation in 3.4%; lymph node >5 cm and/or severe splenomegaly and/or lymphocyte >25X10^9/L in 73.1%. Renal impairment was reported in 9.1% of the patients and concomitant use of systemic anticoagulants in 4.0% of the patients.
The best response at 16 months in terms of ORR was 77.7% of patients (CR 16.3%, 122/747; PR 61.4%, 459/747 patients). Response rates at different time points up to 16 months are reported in supplementary Figure 1. Between 12 and 16 months (corresponding generally to the fourth mandatory patient evaluation), ORR was 53.0%.
At the data cut-off (May 2022) 350 patients (46.9%) were still on ibrutinib and discontinuation occurred in 397 patients (53.1%), with a median TTD of 37.4 months [95% C.I.: 34.8-42.2 months] (Figure 1) and an estimated treatment persistence probability of 63.4% at 24 months [95% C.I.: 60.0%-67.0%]. Disease progression (n. 108 patients) or death (n. 74 patients) were the reasons for discontinuation in 182/397 patients (45.8%), while 215/397 (54.2%) patients discontinued treatment for reasons other than progression or death (Table 2). At multivariable analysis a significantly higher risk of treatment discontinuation was found to be associated with age, ECOG-PS, history of atrial fibrillation and pre-existing severe heart disease (Table 3). Being 70 years or older vs being less than 65 years old increased the risk of treatment discontinuation of 82%, an ECOG class of 1 or 2 or more increased the risk of 32% and 94% respectively, history atrial fibrillation and pre-existing severe heart disease of 80% and 69% respectively. Moreover, a normal renal function decreased the risk of treatment discontinuation of 29% compared to a compromised renal function. Noteworthy, a slight deviation from the proportional assumption was observed for the ECOG class (p = 0.014). Even if the deviation was deemed not relevant upon graphical inspection of the fit of beta coefficient as a function of time, being largely restricted to the first and last days of follow-up (see Supplementary materials), we used an AFT model to back-up our findings, obtaining similar results. Patients with ECOG 2 or more showed a duration of treatment 51% shorter than patients with ECOG 0, confirming the association observed in the COX model.
Median OS was not reached, with a 24-months survival probability of 82.6% [95% C.I.: 79.9% – 85.4%] (Figure 2). When considering only patients that underwent progression or died, median overall survival was 24.7 months (C.I. 95% 20.1-33.0 months).
As shown in Table 3, multivariable analysis showed that ECOG ≥1, age ≥70 years and male sex were significantly associated with an increased risk of death. In particular, male gender was associated with a 38% increase of the risk of death compared to female, patients aged ≥70 years showed a 68% increase of the risk of death compared to patients <65 years and patients with an ECOG-PS 1 or ≥2 was associated with an increased risk of death of 43% and 159%, compared with patients with an ECOG-PS 0, respectively. No deviation in the proportional hazard assumption was found (Table 3).Interestingly, adding random effects to model the Italian health system as a two-level structure, did not significantly modify the results obtained by corresponding fixed effects models neither for TTD nor for OS (log rank test p value = 1.00 and 0.74 for TTD and OS respectively).
Median PDT was 62.2 months (95% C.I.: 55.1-NA), with a 76.6% [95% C.I.: 73.5-79.9] estimated PFS rate at 24 months.
The effect of coexistence of 17p- and TP53 mutations compared to either del(17p) or TP53 mutations alone was evaluated on the subgroup of patients for which information on both del/17p) and TP53 were reported (n=496 patients; 66.4% of the overall population). First, we looked for possible differences in the baseline characteristics among patients with and without the complete mutational status. A logistic regression was performed as a sensitivity analysis showing no significant differences that can point to non-random missingness in the reported data (see supplementary materials). Then, we built a gradient boosting algorithm to predict propensity scores and used them as weights in the Kaplan-Meier estimation of survival probabilities in order to balance the confounding effect of baseline characteristics. After adjusting, no baseline variables were different between the 3 subgroups (supplementary Figure 4). Moreover, no significant differences were observed in weighted survival distribution of the three subgroups (Figure 3) using log-rank tests (p = 0.374 and 0.156 for OS and TTD, respectively).
At the data cut-off, 61/108 patients (56.5%) who discontinued due to disease progression died, with a median post-progression OS of 12.2 months [95% C.I.:9.2 – 22.0] (Figure 4a).
Post-discontinuation median overall survival in 107 patients who discontinued the treatment for reasons other than progression and who were not lost at follow-up was not reached at data cut-off (95% C.I. 42.3-NA months, Figure 4b).