Dr. Locke Discusses Unanswered Questions With CAR T-Cell Therapy

Frederick Locke, MD, a medical oncologist in the Department of Blood and Marrow Transplant, Moffitt Cancer Center, and an assistant professor of oncology at the University of South Florida, discusses unanswered questions with chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy.

There’s a number of remaining challenges with CAR T-cell therapy, one of them being durability of response. Current data show durable responses in 40% of patients with lymphoma. Locke says researchers need to better understand why CAR T-cell therapy doesn’t work for the other 60% of patients. There are some data suggesting there is CD19 loss in a patient who progresses on treatment, though it doesn’t appear to be the case in all patients.

In the ZUMA-1 trial, investigators collected biospecimens from patients and are testing those to better understand mechanisms of resistance to CAR T-cell therapy. Locke says these data should be available shortly. Another next step would be to move CAR T cells to an earlier setting, preferably to the second line. Ongoing randomized trials are testing this question, Locke says.