SWOG Is All Over ASH 2025

If you’re heading to Orlando for the 2025 ASH Annual Meeting and Exposition in the second week of December, and you’re aiming to check out everything SWOG has to offer, you’ll have your work cut out for you. ASH 2025 will feature a particularly large group of posters and presentations reporting on (or responding to) SWOG research.

A number of these abstracts are tied to our S1826 trial, a broad collaboration that established the combination of nivolumab plus AVD (doxorubicin, vincristine, and dacarbazine) as standard first-line treatment for advanced-stage classic Hodgkin lymphoma, in patients age 12 and up.

In the heady early June days of 2023, when S1826’s primary results were being reported at the plenary session of the ASCO Annual Meeting, I wrote

     ... much more is still to come from the S1826 trial, including

• longer-term progression-free survival (PFS) statistics that will tell us how durable patient responses are 
• overall survival (OS) results
• patient-reported outcomes that will give us essential details about how patients are experiencing these two regimens
• future correlative studies of banked specimens and PET-CT images from this trial

 Except for the OS results (the data are not yet in), examples of all of these are being reported at ASH this year.

An oral presentation by S1826 study chair Dr. Alex Herrera will deliver three-year follow-up PFS results telling us whether the initial patient responses were durable (spoiler alert: the answer’s in Dr. Herrara’s title): 

• “3-year follow-up of the S1826 study confirms improved progression-free survival with nivolumab-AVD compared to brentuximab vedotin-AVD in advanced stage classic Hodgkin lymphoma”
  Alex Herrera, MD
  Oral abstract 151

 And at least four abstracts will report additional analyses of S1826 data that fall under the last two bullets above. These include two oral presentations and two posters: 

• “Circulating tumor DNA analyses of molecular tumor burden are superior to PET-assessed responses in patients with advanced stage classic Hodgkin lymphoma treated on SWOG S1826”
  Julia Paczkowska, PhD
  Oral abstract 351
   
• “Clinical prognostication in the SWOG 1826 randomized clinical trial of nivolumab-AVD versus brentuximab-AVD: Performance of the advanced-stage Hodgkin lymphoma international prognostic index (A-HIPI)”
  Carla Casulo, MD
  Oral abstract ID 154
   
• “The influence of age on patient-reported outcomes (PROs) endpoints on the S1826 cross-network Phase III trial of advanced-stage, classic Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL)”
  Kelly Davison, MD, PhD
  Abstract ID 2738
   
• “Interim and end-of-treatment FDG-PET demonstrate limited ability to predict 3-year progression-free survival with nivolumab-AVD in first-line treatment of advanced stage Hodgkin lymphoma: Imaging sub-analysis of Phase 3 S1826 study”
  Nancy Bartlett, MD
  Abstract ID 1851

 The ASH 2025 program also features several reports on work repeating the S1826 treatment comparison in retrospective data sets, including one abstract whose title asks explicitly “Do S1826 results hold up in the real world?”

S1826 has generated an embarrassment of riches at ASH 2025, but another trial in which SWOG is intimately involved and whose impact may eventually be even more far-reaching will also be well covered: myeloMATCH. 

myeloMATCH is the NCI’s precision medicine umbrella trial in myeloid malignancies, pairing patients who have acute myeloid leukemia or myelodysplastic syndrome to treatment sub-studies. Five sub-studies are open at present – more are imminent.

At the core of myeloMATCH is the Master Screening and Reassessment Protocol (MSRP), the screening study that analyzes patients’ bone marrow and blood samples – usually within a 72-hour turnaround window – to assign each patient to an appropriate targeted sub-study, or to the myeloMATCH Tier Advancement Pathway.

This central MSRP component is being led by SWOG.

myeloMATCH opened in May of 2024, and the ASH 2025 meeting is one of the first major venues for reporting lessons learned since the enterprise has gotten up to operating speed (in fact, its current operating speed is quite impressive – I’ll have more to say about this in an upcoming post).

Presentations in Orlando will include a review of the success of this screening protocol over its first 14 months:

• “Myeloid malignancies molecular analysis for therapy choice (myeloMATCH): Rapid availability of clinical, pathologic and molecular features for treatment assignment in the first 550 patients.”
  Eric Winer, MD
  Abstract ID 5279

 Several other abstracts will report on what’s been learned thus far from the analysis of more than a year of myeloMATCH screening assay results, including an oral presentation by the MSRP’s co-chair: 

• “Identifying fusions in AML/MDS: An experience from first 400 patients enrolled into myeloMATCH”
  Shahanawaz Jiwani, MD, PhD
  Oral abstract ID 340
   
•  “Improving karyotype success for myeloMATCH: Evidence-based culturing optimization for rapid AML screening – an NCI myeloMATCH and SWOG report”
  Xiaoyu QU, PhD, FACMG
  Abstract ID 3473
   
• “Biallelic TP53 aberrations and double TP53 mutations are prevalent in AML/MDS patients with del(5q) complex karyotype – an NCI myeloMATCH and SWOG report”
  Min Fang, MD, PhD
  Abstract ID 5276
   
• “Chromosome genomic array testing (CGAT) improves diagnostic yield in patients with AML and MDS and has the potential for better risk stratification – an NCI myeloMATCH and SWOG report”
  Min Fang, MD, PhD
  Abstract ID 3501

 Other SWOG work being reported at ASH includes S1318 long-term follow up results presented by that trial’s PI, and two trials-in-progress posters, one on the only NCTN trial now underway in Waldenstrom’s macroglobulinemia (S2005) and another on SWOG’s first myeloMATCH sub-study:

• “SWOG 1318: Combination of dasatinib, prednisone, and blinatumomab for older patients with Philadelphia chromosome positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia: Longer follow up and predictors of outcomes”
  Anjali Advani, MD
  Abstract ID 3343
   
• “S2005: A phase II randomized study comparing ibrutinib and rituximab (IR) vs. venetoclax and rituximab (VR) in previously untreated Waldenström's macroglobulinemia (WM) / lymphoplasmacytic lymphoma (LPL)”
  Sikander Ailawadhi, MD
  Abstract ID 1840
   
• “A randomized Phase II trial of ASTX727 and venetoclax with or without enasidenib for newly diagnosed older adults with IDH2 mutant Acute Myeloid Leukemia: A myeloMATCH substudy (MM1OA-S03)”
  Eric Huselton, MD
  Abstract ID 3466

 In addition, you’ll find numerous abstracts on work led by other NCTN groups that includes contributions by SWOG investigators, including work led by the Alliance, ECOG-ACRIN, and the Children’s Oncology Group.

All in all, the abstracts cited above represent an extraordinary body of research in hematologic malignancies, showcasing both the profound impact SWOG’s work is having in the field and the value of publicly supported research in liquid cancers. I couldn’t be prouder of my colleagues!