Excitement Around Immunotherapies for Hematologic Malignancies

Guenther Koehne, MD, PhD, deputy director and chief of Blood & Marrow Transplant and Hematologic Oncology at Miami Cancer Institute of Baptist Health South Florida, and director of the Summit of the Americas on Immunotherapies for Hematologic Malignancies discusses the exciting presentations going on at the 3rd Annual Meeting.

At the summit, multiple speakers will cover updates in approaches to treating lymphomas, acute lymphoblastic leukemia, and multiple myeloma. There will also be important discussions around chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy and allogeneic stem cell transplantation.

Transcription:

0:08 | Based on the selection of the speakers, I mean, it's extraordinary to have Richard Stone from Dana-Farber update us on the development of acute myeloid leukemia developments to integrate the novel therapies into the treatment. We have Hagop Kantarjian, who has been the leader in acute lymphoblastic leukemia for many years who was participating in person. We have Dr. Wendy Stock from [the] University of Chicago that will update us on acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Those are all exciting presentations and events.

0:43 | We will focus on novel developments for the treatment of multiple myeloma with an emphasis on B-cell maturation antigen targeted therapies or BCMA. Targeted therapies that will be presented by a series of speakers, including Dr. Adam Cohen from the University of Pennsylvania. Paul Richardson from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute will give us an update on all of the developments of new developments in combination therapies for multiple myeloma. There are lots of new developments in the treatment of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma that will be presented. But particularly I'm interested when excited about updating the audience about the developments of the CAR T cell therapies.

1:31 | Michel Sadelain, who was the first with Carl Jung at the time from the University of Pennsylvania, to develop CAR T cell therapies. I've been a longtime colleague of Michel Sadelain. During my time at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, I remember very well the first time when he walked into the room, and proposed an idea of modifying T cells with an antibody. That was way before we call them CAR T cells or chimeric antigen receptor T cells. Now, he will give us a keynote address and update on the future of CAR T cell therapies.

2:12 | Now, this raises also the question, how do the CAR T cells fit into the landscape of stem cell transplantation? And will it affect it in a sense that we do not need transplants anymore or whether it affected that we may even be able to do more transplants, which I believe are off because with CAR T cell therapies, we can get more patients back into remission, [and] follow up with a transplant. So that is my friend from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, who's the chief of Transplantation, Robert Soiffer, who will pick up on this topic, which I think is critical to address.