The publication that came out of MD Anderson a couple of years ago now created a lot of interest – the use of CD19 CAR-transduced NK cells in the off-the-shelf setting. These were cord blood-derived NK cells that were gene engineered with the CD19 CAR.
They definitely demonstrated in this study that there was a strong safety signal, and they also were able to show that gene engineering the NK cells with the CAR that also had membrane-bound IL-15 associated with it did result in a longer detection of these adoptively transferred NK cells than had previously been described in other studies using NK cells...
The publication that came out of MD Anderson a couple of years ago now created a lot of interest – the use of CD19 CAR-transduced NK cells in the off-the-shelf setting. These were cord blood-derived NK cells that were gene engineered with the CD19 CAR.
They definitely demonstrated in this study that there was a strong safety signal, and they also were able to show that gene engineering the NK cells with the CAR that also had membrane-bound IL-15 associated with it did result in a longer detection of these adoptively transferred NK cells than had previously been described in other studies using NK cells.
So, this was very exciting for the field. I think what the study still hasn’t addressed is the efficacy of this platform, and this can really only be answered in larger phase studies. And so, there is a wealth of activity going on, both in academia and in pharma, to get these off-the-shelf CAR NK cells to the clinic and test the efficacy question.
I think also where off-the-shelf CAR NK cells could make a potential impact is in the solid tumor setting. As we know, CAR T-cells, so far, have not made much of an impact in the solid tumor setting, certainly nothing like the impact they have made in the blood cancer setting. So, there’s a lot of activity around looking at the potential for these CAR NK cell products for solid tumors, and so, this is a space I think we all should watch very carefully.