Janna Minehart, MD, on Hematology-Oncology Immunotherapy Highlights at ASH 2025

“I've been interested to see the increase in CAR products targeting multiple antigens. I think that that's really interesting, even though you don't see as much antigen escape in terms of losing CD19—it's usually more of a problem with CD20—I think that's still an exciting new CAR approach.”

In recent years, investigators at a wide number of companies and academic institutions have made advances in the use of immunotherapies to treat hematologic malignancies. From monoclonal antibodies to cell-based approaches such as chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapies, a diverse array of treatment modalities are currently in clinical use and under evaluation in trials and preclinical studies. As is typical, many investigators presented updates on their recent research in this field at the 67th American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition, held December 6 to 9, 2025, in Orlando, Florida.

At the conference, CGTLive® sat down with Janna Minehart, MD, a clinical fellow in hematology oncology (Master of Science Translational Research Program) at the University of Pennsylvania, and the cohost of CGTLive’s own ImmunoLogic video podcast, to discuss her thoughts so far on some of the highlights in hematology-oncology immunotherapy at the conference. Minehart began by sharing her excitement about attending ASH in person for the first time, noting that she had only attended virtually in the past. She then highlighted 2 standout plenary presentations from this year’s conference that she attended. The first compared standard induction chemotherapy for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) with azacitidine plus venetoclax. She noted that she had contributed to the care for some of the trial’s patients, which made the findings even more meaningful to her. The second plenary presentation she highlighted compared 3 different regimens for the treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL).

Minehart also noted growing interest at the conference in circulating tumor DNA in lymphomas as a prognostic tool, and stated that she has been following new CAR-T research, including multiantigen targeting approaches and data on rare secondary T-cell malignancies after CAR-T.

For more coverage of ASH 2025, click here.