Amer Beitinjaneh, MD, MSc, MPH, FACP, on Treating EBV+ PTLD With Tab-cel

“For patients with EBV-positive Post-Transplant Lymphoproliferative Disorder who failed rituximab-based therapy, the outcome is usually very dismal... Median overall survival is often less than 4 months and there are currently no approved treatments indicated for those patients. So initially, we will use immune suppression and rituximab-based therapy, but once you fail, you will pretty much have no options.”

Tabelecleucel (tab-cel; Atara Biotherapeutics), an allogeneic Epstein–Barr virus (EBV)-specific T-cell immunotherapy, produced clinically meaningful outcomes and demonstrated a promising safety profile in patients with EBV-positive post-transplant lymphoproliferative disease (EBV+ PTLD) treated in the phase 3 ALLELE clinical trial (NCT03394365). Updated data from the trial were presented at the 2023 Tandem Meetings |Transplantation & Cellular Therapy Meetings of ASTCT and CIBMTR, held in Orlando, Florida, February 15-19, 2023, by Amer Beitinjaneh, MD, MSc, MPH, FACP, associate professor of medicine at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami.

CGTLive spoke with Beitinjaneh about the updated results from the ALLELE study. He discussed the unmet need that tab-cel can help address in patients with EBV+ PTLD. Tab-cel is approved in the European Union in the same indication.

REFERENCE

Beitinjaneh A, Baiocchi R, Choquet S, et al. New and updated results from a multicenter, open-label, global phase 3 (P3) study of tabelecleucel (Tab-cel) for Epstein–Barr virus-positive post-transplant lymphoproliferative disease (EBV+ PTLD) following allogeneic hematopoietic cell (HCT) or solid organ transplant (SOT) after failure of rituximab (R) or rituximab and chemotherapy (R+CT) (ALLELE). Presented at: 2023 Tandem Meetings, February 15-19, 2023; Orlando, Florida. Abstract #25.