Marco Davila, MD, PhD, on Investigating Mechanisms of CAR T Resistance in B-cell Malignancies

“CAR T cells were first approved for patients with B-cell malignancies in 2017. We've seen tremendous outcomes for these patients, up to 30 to 40% of patients have long term remissions. But that also means that the majority of patients don't have long term remissions. And what we're trying to do is utilize samples from patients to understand what mechanisms might be behind those nonresponses or early relapses.”

Research remains to be done to understand more about what characteristics and mechanisms lead to some patients with B-cell malignancies to have durable responses to chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies while others do not respond or relapse early. Investigators at Roswell Comprehensive Cancer Center, including Marco Davila, MD, PhD, Senior Vice President and Associate Director, Translational Research, and Vice-Chair, Cellular Therapies.

Davila presented research him and his colleagues are conducting at the center to address the question of CAR T resistance at the 2023 Tandem Meetings |Transplantation & Cellular Therapy Meetings of ASTCT and CIBMTR, held in Orlando, Florida, February 15-19, 2023. CGTLive spoke with Davila to learn more about the unmet needs in this area of research and some findings that were presented.

REFERENCE

Davila ML. Mechanisms of Resistance to CD19-Targeted CAR T Cells: Lessons from Mice and Patients. Presented at: 2023 Tandem Meetings, February 15-19, 2023.