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ERIC CLL 2026 | Is there a role for CAR T-cell therapy in the treatment pathway for CLL?
Marco Ruella, MD, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, discusses the potential role of cell therapy, particularly CAR T-cell therapy, in treating chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), highlighting its ability to eradicate the disease in selected patients. Dr Ruella notes that most CLL treatment options require prolonged exposure and are not curative, whereas CAR-T offers a potentially definitive treatment approach for appropriately selected patients. This interview took place at the 2026 ERIC International Meeting in Barcelona, Spain.
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Transcript
I think cell therapies and of course CAR T-cell therapy are a great option for CLL. They are not widely used because we have many treatment options that are effective for CLL. But all those treatment options, or at least most of them, require prolonged exposure, like either continuous or fixed duration, which still involve many, many months of treatment. Very few of them, probably none of them, are able to completely eradicate the CLL...
I think cell therapies and of course CAR T-cell therapy are a great option for CLL. They are not widely used because we have many treatment options that are effective for CLL. But all those treatment options, or at least most of them, require prolonged exposure, like either continuous or fixed duration, which still involve many, many months of treatment. Very few of them, probably none of them, are able to completely eradicate the CLL. The only one that they really can do is allogeneic stem cell transplant, which is very toxic, or CAR T-cell. So I think that there is definitely a role for CAR in CLL. Now, obviously, given that CLL can have a very good prognosis with simple therapies or even without therapies, we will need to be very smart in selecting the right patients. But if you have patients who are young, who have high-risk disease, and maybe they have relapsed after a couple of cycles, and they want to have a definitive therapy, I think that CAR T-cells are probably the best option.
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