Franck Morschhauser, MD, PhD, on Next Steps for Follicular Lymphoma and Liso-Cel

“The next step is to really dig into the biology... the best way is to join forces... [bring] all the components together to better predict the risk of the patients. So far this is not something that we’re really good at. We need more patients, a big sample size, bioinformaticians, dedicated people to do all that, and it’s going to take a little bit more time.”

Lisocabtagene maraleucel (liso-cel; Breyanzi, Bristol Myers Squibb) CD19-targeted chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy yielded high complete response rates with durable remissions in patients with high-risk relapsed/refractory follicular lymphoma (FL) as a second line treatment.

These updated data from the TRANSCEND FL trial (NCT04245839) were presented by Franck Morschhauser, MD, PhD, professor, hematology, University of Lille and Hospital Claude Huriez, and chair, Lymphoma Study Association (LYSA), in a poster at the 2023 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, held December 9-12, in San Diego, California. The data may support liso-cel's expansion to treating earlier line patients with high-risk disease.

CGTLive spoke with Morschhauser to learn more about the next priorities in research needed to take treatment of FL to the next level. He also discussed, as chair of LYSA, how the group focused on building and funding clinical trials in 2023 and the trials it plans to launch in 2024. These include a phase 3 study of liso-cel to follow up on the data seen in TRANSCEND FL for second line treatment.

Click here to read more coverage of ASH 2023.

REFERENCE

Morschhauser F, Dahiya S, Palomba ML, et al. TRANSCEND FL: Phase 2 study primary analysis of lisocabtagene maraleucel as second-line therapy in patients with high-risk relapsed or refractory follicular lymphoma. Presented at: 2023 ASH Annual Meeting & Exposition, December 9-12; San Diego, California. Abstract 602.