Dr. Younes Discusses the Future of CAR T-Cell Therapy

Anas Younes, MD, chief of Lymphoma Service, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses the future of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy for patients with hematologic malignancies.

There is currently a CAR T cell product approved for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), but the next disease that might benefit is multiple myeloma, says Younes. There are 2 phase I trials that were reported at the 2017 ASH Annual Meeting that showed improved response rates for patients with multiple myeloma. The number of patients investigated was small but there was a 90% response rate with a high complete response rate, explains Younes. With all these CAR T-cell therapies, the length of follow-up is short but the response rates throughout the diseases are exciting.

For example, in a dose escalation study for patients with heavily pretreated relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma, the BCMA-directed CAR T-cell therapy bb2121 induced complete remissions for 56% of patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma. Additionally, there was a 94% objective response rate, which consisted of a very good partial response or better for 89% of patients. After 40 weeks of follow-up, the median progression-free survival (PFS) had not yet been reached, and the 9-month PFS rate was 71%. Regarding safety, the treatment was generally well tolerated.