Brian Van Tine, MD, PhD, on Continued Durability of Afami-Cel in Synovial Sarcoma
The professor of medicine and pediatrics at Washington University in St. Louis discussed updated survival data from SPEARHEAD-1.
"SPEARHEAD is one of the most interesting things I've had the privilege of working on in my career for synovial sarcoma patients that are not only HLA*02, but also express the MAGE-A4 antigen. The ability to take patients’ T-cells out of their body, remanufacture them and put them back, has led to a T spear therapy for synovial sarcoma that has deep and durable responses. In fact, it's just been made public that they're now going for a traditional approval and no longer an accelerated approval, because the data is that strong.”
Patients with advanced synovial sarcoma treated with afamitresgene autoleucel (afami-cel; AdaptImmune) T-cell receptor SPEAR T-cell therapy in the phase 2 SPEARHEAD-1 trial (NCT04044768) have continued to experience a survival benefit. Updated survival data from the trial were presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2023 Annual Meeting, held June 2-6, in Chicago, Illinois, by Brian Van Tine, MD, PhD, professor, medicine and pediatrics, Washington University in St. Louis.
CGTLive™’s sister site, OncLive™, spoke with Van Tine to learn more about the updated data survival data, which continues to demonstrate a durable and deep response in treated patients. He noted that AdaptImmune is no longer pursuing an accelerated approval for afami-cel in favor of a traditional approval. He also touched on the manageable safety profile of afami-cel, which includes transient cases of cytokine release syndrome but no new, long-term safety signals. He shared possible next steps for the platform, including targeted other antigens besides MAGE-A4.
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