Successful Treatment of Richter Transformation with Ibrutinib in a Patient with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia following Allogeneic Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant

Abstract

Patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) who progress to Richter transformation (RT) have a poor prognosis. Multi-agent chemotherapy regimens do not have good response rates. There are few case reports on the use of ibrutinib in RT. Here, we present a patient who was heavily pretreated for CLL, including allogeneic stem cell transplant, and progressed to RT. She had a mixed response to multi-agent chemotherapy and was started on ibrutinib. She had a complete response for 16 months on single-agent ibrutinib with minimal toxicity.

Keywords

• Ibrutinib
• Richter transformation
• Chronic lymphocytic leukemia
• Ibrutinib after allogeneic transplant