ACTA HAEMATOL-BASEL

Background: The treatment landscape of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) has tremendously evolved in the last decades, thanks to the introduction of more effective therapies.

Summary: Frontline therapy for patients with CLL includes chemoimmunotherapy (CIT) and pathway inhibitors (PIs) (i.e., bruton tyrosine kinase inhibitors and BCL2 inhibitors); the latter has proved to be more effective than CIT mainly in patients with high-risk features (e.g., TP53 aberrations and unmutated IGHV) with acceptable toxicity. Combinations of PIs are playing the protagonist role as frontline therapy for CLL.

Key messages: In this article, the management of treatment-naïve patients with CLL is discussed.