ICML 2021 | The future of CAR T-cell therapies in hematologic malignancies

We’ve seen some really exciting results from multiple CAR T-cell studies, across many different hematologic malignancies. As we all know, this has been a very effective strategy for patients with aggressive leukemias, as well as aggressive lymphomas. And we’re now seeing the introduction or the completion of several clinical trials using CAR T-cells in other diseases such as relapsed mantle cell lymphoma and relapsed follicular lymphoma.

Early data from some of the first trials with tisagenlecleucel suggested that this type of strategy, especially in patients that have relapsed or refractory disease could be very, very effective. With this trial, I think that it’s clear that this is a very nice strategy for patients that have a relapsed disease. And we’re hoping with the follow-up, we’re going to see a plateau of a curve, suggesting that potentially CAR T-cell approaches can be curative in relapsed follicular.

So I think, again, as these studies continue to mature and we begin to see other validation studies, I’m hopeful that we’ll see CAR T-cells move into a standard of care in relapsed follicular lymphoma, as well as potentially in early lines of therapy. The side effect profile suggests that these approaches can be quite mild. And with tisagenlecleucel, again we saw very minimal grade 3/4 events, including cytokine release syndrome or neurologic events. And again, in a population of patients that has indolent disease, I think this is very, very important because we, again often are looking at the disease course over many years, not just in the month or two that patients received therapy.