NEW YORK – Global oncology biopharma firm BeiGene said Wednesday that it has entered a new partnership with CLL Society, a nonprofit organization focused on chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL), to promote upfront biomarker testing to guide the use of targeted therapies in these cancers.
The collaboration will focus on an awareness campaign called Test Before Treat, which is intended to reach both healthcare providers and patients with CLL/SLL. The campaign aims to educate these groups about the value of pretreatment molecular testing. BeiGene and CLL Society plan to spotlight the campaign during the upcoming American Society of Hematology annual meeting.
"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," Mehrdad Mobasher, BeiGene's chief medical officer for hematology, said in a statement.
In particular, patients with high-risk CLL that host certain genomic alterations, such as del(17p) or TP53 mutations, have "vastly different outcomes depending on the choice of therapy," Mobasher added. The company estimated that about half of CLL/SLL patients have these high-risk molecular features.
In addition to pushing for pretreatment testing, the campaign will also stress the value of repeat testing before subsequent lines of therapy, as a cancer's genetic profile can change over time.