How well a certain treatment for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) or small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL) works can vary greatly depending on the makeup of an individual patient’s disease, making pre-treatment biomarker testing especially important.
With that in mind, BeiGene has teamed up with the nonprofit CLL Society to launch a campaign pushing CLL and SLL patients and their doctors to start with biomarker testing before initial and subsequent treatments.
The partners unveiled the “Test Before Treat” initiative Wednesday and will spotlight the campaign during the American Society of Hematology’s (ASH's) annual meeting in San Diego this month.
In addition to its in-person ASH debut, the campaign will reach doctors and patients through targeted social media and other digital media ads, resources placed in doctors’ offices and a dedicated website, complete with educational information and videos highlighting the experiences of real CLL patients.
The first such video highlights the story of Nathan, who learned about the importance of biomarker testing from the CLL Society’s website shortly after being diagnosed with CLL.
“My initial doctor wanted to do chemotherapy. Had I not pursued the correct information, most likely I would’ve relapsed within five years,” Nathan says in the video. “It took two doctors and finally seeing a CLL specialist to get all the testing I needed to make an informed decision on my treatment plan.”
After undergoing biomarker testing, Nathan was put on a non-chemotherapy treatment route, and he’s now in remission.
“It’s very important that you know your biomarker and mutation status in order to choose the right therapy,” he says in the video, later adding that “Test Before Treat gave me the opportunity for a longer life” and is “the most important step in your CLL journey.”
The campaign is specifically aimed at the approximately 50% of CLL and SLL patients who have high-risk molecular features that can impact the efficacy of some treatments, per BeiGene. It also aligns with guidelines recommending targeted therapies like BTK inhibitors over chemotherapy for patients with certain genetic factors.
“While scientific advancements have significantly expanded treatment options for people with CLL, too many patients do not receive the therapies that will work best for them based on their unique disease prognostic parameters. In particular, high-risk CLL, including disease with deletion(17p) and/or TP53 mutations, has vastly different outcomes depending on the choice of therapy,” Mehrdad Mobasher, M.D., BeiGene’s chief medical officer, hematology, said in Wednesday’s announcement.
“By partnering with CLL Society for the Test Before Treat campaign, we hope to educate people living with CLL on the importance of biomarker testing and how it can help chart a course for better individualized care and ultimately improved patient outcomes,” Mobasher continued.
BeiGene—which recently announced an upcoming name change to BeOne Medicines—is itself the maker of Brukinsa. The BTK inhibitor was approved by the FDA early last year to treat CLL and SLL, pitting it against rivals like AbbVie and Johnson & Johnson’s Imbruvica, AstraZeneca’s Calquence and, most recently, Eli Lilly’s Jaypirca.