Assessing the Need for Extended Monitoring After Axi-Cel Infusion
Olalekan O Oluwole, MD, MBBS, discusses the background and rationale of the research he contributed to, which was presented at the 2025 Transplantation & Cellular Therapy Meetings.
Olalekan O Oluwole, MD, MBBS, associate professor, medicine, hematology/oncology, Vanderbilt Institute for Infection, Immunology and Inflammation, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, discusses the background and rationale of the research he contributed to, which was presented at the 2025 Transplantation & Cellular Therapy Meetings.
Axicabtagene ciloleucel (axi-cel; Yescarta) is an autologous anti-CD19 chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy that has become a standard treatment for patients with relapsed/refractory large B-cell lymphoma (LBCL). Despite its efficacy, patients with LBCL are typically monitored for 4 weeks post-infusion due to potential cytokine release syndrome (CRS) and neurological events (NEs), according to the presentation.
This particular study presented at the meeting aimed to assess the risk of CRS/NE recurrence after a minimum of 2 weeks, potentially allowing for reduced monitoring.
Transcription:
0:10 | We have been treating patients with CAR T for many years now, and we believe that we are learning how to use them better and how to better treat patients. So, 1 requirement at the onset of the program by the FDA was that patients needed to stay close to the academics, or wherever they get the CAR T for almost a month. And we know that these CAR T’s are a one time infusion, and all the [adverse] effects that they cause early on will be really early after the treatment. So, it seems reasonable to go back and look and see whether indeed we see all these [adverse] effects early, or whether indeed we see them for the whole 28 days.
0:59 | That was really the motivation for this study, to try to look back and cluster all the statical release syndrome, all the neurological events, and find out whether, indeed they recover early or whether they extend for the whole time. So, that was really the hypothesis.
