Colleen E. Annesley, MD, on Continued Research With T-APCs to Enhance Cell Therapy Persistence

“We're currently examining if it's worth taking T-APCs forward. I think these data are really promising. I think if we get to a point where we can find the right CAR T-cell products going forward, it would have to be a CD19 -targeting CAR product to bring forward CD19 T-APCs. So, we are looking at exploring that in future trials, to see if we could continue to study this and see if, in more patients, we do see that difference and longer-term remissions, longer term persistence of CAR T-cells.”

CD19t T-APCs (manufactured T cells with CD19 tag antigen presenting cells)have shown potential in enhancing cell persistence in patients with higher risk of relapse after treatment with SCRI-CAR19 for relapsed, refractory CD19+ B-cell acute lymphocytic leukemia (B-ALL).

Data from patients in the PLAT-02 (NCT02028455) and PLAT-03 (NCT03186118) trials were presented by Colleen E. Annesley, MD, Medical Director and interim co-Chief Medical Officer, Seattle Children's Therapeutics, and Associate Professor, Department of Pediatrics, University of Washington School of Medicine, in a poster at the 2023 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, held December 9-12, in San Diego, California.

CGTLive spoke with Annesley to learn more about the PLAT-02 and PLAT-03 trials and continued research with T-APCs. She discussed challenges with manufacturing T-APCs, assessing the cell therapy in clinical trials, and improving access to these kinds of therapies.

Click here to read more coverage of the ASH 2023 meeting.

REFERENCE

Annesley C, Seidel K, Wu QV, et al. A phase 2 trial of SCRI-CAR19 demonstrates favorable leukemia-free survival (LFS), with a pilot study of CD19-expressing T-cell antigen presenting cells (CD19t T-APCs) demonstrating safety and tolerability. Presented at: 2023 ASH Annual Meeting & Exposition, December 9-12; San Diego, California. Abstract 3467