Advances in Follicular Lymphoma: Long-Term Outcomes, CAR-T Durability, and Emerging Treatment Strategies

At the 2026 Lymphoma, Leukemia & Myeloma (LL&M) Winter Symposium, Nina Wagner-Johnston, MD, Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center, Baltimore, Maryland, discussed key follicular lymphoma highlights from the 2025 ASH Annual Meeting. She emphasized excellent long-term outcomes in the University of Iowa/Mayo Clinic SPORE molecular epidemiology resource with more than half of patients alive at 18 years of follow-up and a low incidence of late transformation. 

She also shared long-term data showing durable CAR-T responses and highlighted emerging treatment strategies, including frontline mosunetuzumab and epcoritamab plus rituximab and lenalidomide in relapsed disease, which demonstrate promising depth of response and progression-free survival benefits.

Transcript:

Hi, my name is Nina Wagner-Johnston. I'm a professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins University. I'm attending the 2026 LL&M Winter Symposium. And I'd just like to share some of the highlights that we saw in follicular lymphoma at the recent ASH Annual Meeting.

I think one of the most important take homes was just that patients do incredibly well with follicular lymphoma. This was highlighted by Jonathan Day from the Mayo Clinic where he presented the data from the Mayo/Iowa SPORE with long-term follow-up in patients with follicular lymphoma. More than half of patients are still living at 18 years of follow-up. The incidence of transformation is really not very high beyond 10 years of follow-up. And if you look at individuals that are over the age of 60, the incidence of non-lymphoma deaths starts exceeding that of lymphoma deaths beyond 10 years. So I thought this was very exciting data in terms of the outstanding outcomes that patients with follicular lymphoma have today.

Other highlights from the ASH Meeting were mostly focused on long-term follow-up data. So there was long-term follow-up in patients treated with CAR-T. We see that the responses to CAR-T are quite durable at 3- and at 5-year follow-up. The incidence of CRS is quite manageable. And that was one of the highlights that we saw with CAR-T in follicular lymphoma.

Some of the other highlights that we're seeing were the mosunetuzumab in combination, which seems to enhance the depth of response. These were studies in the frontline setting. So, I think that mosunetuzumab seems to be a good treatment approach for patients with first-line treatment.

And then lastly, in the relapsed setting, we saw the data looking at epcoritamab in combination with rituximab and lenalidomide, which showed outstanding progression-free survival as well as a potential overall survival benefit compared to R-Len alone.

Source:

Wagner-Johnston N. The Latest Updates in Follicular Lymphoma. Presented at Lymphoma, Leukemia & Myeloma Winter Symposium; January 30-February 1, 2026. Amelia Island, Fl.