The Community Focus Channel is supported with funding from Johnson & Johnson (Gold).
VJHemOnc is an independent medical education platform. Supporters, including channel supporters, have no influence over the production of content. The levels of sponsorship listed are reflective of the amount of funding given to support the channel.
SOHO 2026 | Long-term survivorship after CAR T-cell therapy: addressing non-relapse mortality
Michael Jain, MD, PhD, Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, FL, discusses long-term survivorship after CAR T-cell therapy in patients who remain at risk of infection and secondary malignancy, noting that while there is a significant body of literature on survivorship in other areas of oncology, there is a lack of data on CAR T-cell therapy. Dr Jain explains that greater collaboration with community oncology and primary care providers is required to better integrate survivorship care into existing oncology frameworks. This interview took place at the 14th Annual Meeting of the Society of Hematologic Oncology (SOHO 2026) in Houston, TX.
These works are owned by Magdalen Medical Publishing (MMP) and are protected by copyright laws and treaties around the world. All rights are reserved.
Transcript
So now we’re in 2026 and we’ve had approved CAR T-cells for standard of care therapy since 2017. So we’re almost a decade into CAR T-cell therapy. And the exciting thing about this is many patients have not relapsed during that time. And more and more patients are being treated with these therapies and are in long-term remission. And that’s really exciting...
So now we’re in 2026 and we’ve had approved CAR T-cells for standard of care therapy since 2017. So we’re almost a decade into CAR T-cell therapy. And the exciting thing about this is many patients have not relapsed during that time. And more and more patients are being treated with these therapies and are in long-term remission. And that’s really exciting. But the most tragic thing that can happen to these patients is a non-relapse mortality. They went to all this effort. Their lymphoma or leukemia was cured, but they succumbed to something like an infection or a secondary malignancy or something that maybe was preventable, a secondary cancer. In other areas of oncology, these survivorship areas have been thought about quite a bit. Stem cell transplants, pediatric cancers. And so the purpose of this review is to try to say, hey, listen, these patients have really important issues. What are the ones that are shared with these other areas of survivorship that we know about? And what are the ones that might be unique to CAR T-cell therapy that we want to think about so that these patients can really do what the promise was, is be cured and live excellent lives over the long term. So we established a bit of a roadmap, but the data is lacking. So it’s a bit of a call to arms. You know, we all need to generate more data and really understand this. Obviously, it’s daunting because this has to go on over many years across many settings. Patients aren’t going to come back to the CAR T-cell center for everything that they need for decades at a time. So the community physicians need to be involved, whether that’s an oncology group or whether that’s primary care. And so we’re hoping that we can get more information out there on the best way to manage these patients and try to integrate into existing efforts for oncology patients that are there.
This transcript is AI-generated. While we strive for accuracy, please verify this copy with the video.
Read more...
