Hodgkin lymphoma: outsmarting HRS cells

In their article in this issue of Blood describing the use of a new bispecific antibody, AFM13, plus a checkpoint inhibitor, pembrolizumab, for patients with recurrent or refractory classic Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL), Bartlett and her coauthors provide dramatic evidence of the treatment potency that can be achieved with a 3-pronged therapeutic attack employing 2 biologic agents targeting specific immunologic characteristics of cHL Hodgkin and Reed-Sternberg (HRS) cells.(1) They show how to forcefully recruit the patient's immune system's killer cells while at the same time enhancing their cytodestructive potency. Their work nicely demonstrates how recent progress in the treatment of cHL has been carefully built on an increasingly exquisite understanding of the molecular biology underlying the immunology of malignant HRS cells and their dynamic interaction with both specific and nonspecific effector cells in the immune system.