As co-leader of the Leukemia and Hematologic Malignancies Program at the OSUCCC – James, my research focuses on targeted therapies for CLL and strategies to overcome resistance to targeted therapies. I led the collaborative effort that identified the mechanism of resistance to the BTK inhibitor ibrutinib in CLL and have led preclinical and clinical studies to identify drugs that can overcome ibrutinib resistance.
Most recently, I led a multi-institutional phase III clinical trial that showed older patients with CLL have a significantly lower rate of disease progression if treated with ibrutinib rather than with bendamustine plus rituximab — a regimen previously considered as one of the most effective therapies for this group of patients. It was the first head-to-head comparison between the two treatments. Results were reported simultaneously in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) and in the plenary session at the American Society of Hematology (ASH) 2018 Annual Meeting.