R-CHOP (lymphoma chemoimmunotherapy)

The authors' conclusion is that ibrutinib-rituximab should be considered a new standard-of-care option for first-line treatment of older patients with mantle-cell lymphoma. The subgroup split means it is clearly better than R-CHOP and roughly equivalent to bendamustine-rituximab.

R-CHOP remains the standard first-line regimen for diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. The trial is also the clearest lesson in the disease about adopting a regimen on single-arm data: dose-adjusted EPOCH-R had been used widely for a decade before this comparison existed.

Four cycles rather than six for young patients with limited-stage, low-risk aggressive B-cell lymphoma. The saving is two cycles of anthracycline and vincristine in people who will live for decades afterwards.

A failure worth reading: the drug worked where patients could tolerate the regimen it was added to, and harmed where they could not. It is the strongest argument in lymphoma for designing first-line combinations around what an older patient can finish.

A clean example of a progression-free survival benefit that did not become a survival benefit. Lenalidomide maintenance did not become standard practice after this trial, and the figures are the reason.

Rituximab remains the CD20 antibody used in first-line diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. The result is a warning against assuming an antibody improvement carries from one B-cell malignancy to another: the same substitution improved progression-free survival in chronic lymphocytic leukaemia and in follicular lymphoma.

The single most used prognostic marker in follicular lymphoma, and the reason a relapse at 20 months is handled differently from one at 30 months. It is now a standard stratification factor and a standard eligibility criterion in trials of the disease.