NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology updated to include pralatrexate drug

NCCN has added pralatrexate (Folotyn(TM), Allos Therapeutics, Inc.) to the NCCN Guidelines for Non-Hodgkin's Lymphomas as one of the options for second-line therapy for relapsed or refractory peripheral T-cell lymphoma. The FDA-approved pralatrexate for the treatment of peripheral T-cell lymphoma on September 25, 2009

Upon the recent FDA approval of pralatrexate (Folotyn(TM), Allos Therapeutics, Inc.) for the treatment of relapsed or refractory peripheral T-cell lymphoma (PTCL), the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) has updated the NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology(TM) for Non-Hodgkin's Lymphomas to include pralatrexate as a suggested treatment regimen.

The updated NCCN Guidelines have added pralatrexate as a second-line therapy option for relapsed or refractory PTCL with a category 2A recommendation for patients who are not candidates for high dose therapy and a category 2B recommendation for patients who are candidates for high dose therapy.

Peripheral T-cell lymphoma is a rare form of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma that is particularly aggressive and challenging to treat. Pralatrexate recently became the first FDA-approved single agent therapy indicated for patients with relapsed or refractory disease, meaning those whose disease has returned or has not responded to other types of therapy.

NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology(TM) are developed and updated through an evidence-based process with explicit review of the scientific evidence integrated with expert judgment by multidisciplinary panels of physicians from NCCN Member Institutions. The most recent version of this and all the NCCN Guidelines are available free of charge at NCCN.org.