Investigating CAR T-Cell Therapy for Use in Different Disease Types

Michael Bishop, MD, a professor of medicine and director of Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation Program at The University of Chicago Medicine, discusses the investigations of and responses to chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy in different disease types.

One of the settings furthest along in exploring the use of CAR T cells is non-Hodgkin lymphoma, with about 40% to 50% patients are achieving sustainable complete responses with CAR T-cell therapy. There are still significant areas that can be improved upon for this patient population, according to Bishop.

Another disease type where there is potential opportunity to use CAR T cells is acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Bishop says there has been success for children in this setting, and now there is study for adults that will be reporting out soon called the ZUMA-3 trial (NCT02614066), which investigated brexucabtagene autoleucel (KTE-X19). Other studies are looking at the use of allogeneic CAR T-cell therapy in patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

There are also trials in multiple myeloma looking at CAR T-cell therapy. Bishop feels the results for this patient population appear to be very exciting, with higher and more sustained complete response rates, and there is an opportunity to further improve upon those results.