Improving Access to CAR T-Cell Therapies in Lymphoma: Nilanjan Ghosh, MD, PhD

"One of the biggest challenges is access to CAR T. There is a lag between planning to use CAR T-cell therapy for a patient and the actual infusion. You need time for financial clearance for the therapy, to set a date for leukapheresis, and to manufacture CAR T-cells, and those are all significant lags. This is a population of patients who have refractory disease and it's very difficult to keep them stable for an extended period of time.”

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy has represented a big step forward in treatment for hematologic malignancies and, on an exploratory basis, solid tumors. Approved CAR T-cell therapies includelisocabtagene maraleucel (Breyanzi),axicabtagene cliolecleucel (Yescarta), and, most recently, ciltacabtagene autoleucel (Carvykti), approved for relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma in late February 2022.

Nilanjan Ghosh, MD, PhD, chief of the lymphoma division and oncologist at Levine Cancer Institute, has first-hand experience with these cell therapies on the clinic side and has seen their impact in patients with hematologic malignancies such as lymphomas.

CGTLive spoke to Ghosh to learn more about the impact of CAR T-cell therapies in the lymphoma space, including how access to these therapies remains a challenge.