Shahzad Raza, MD, on Future Plans for CAR T-Cell Therapy NXC-201 in R/R Light Chain Amyloidosis
The hematologist/oncologist at the Cleveland Clinic discussed next steps after early promising results were presented at ASCO’s 2025 meeting.
This is the second part of an interview with Shahzad Raza, MD. For the first part, click here.
“This is very different than continuing to bring patients to the clinic every week do therapy. A treatment holiday—freedom from more treatments —at least for our timeline, I think would be an important point for these patients. I think the future studies should focus on treatment holidays...”
Immix Biopharma and its subsidiary Nexcella are currently developing NXC-201, an investigational autologous BCMA-directed chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapy, for the treatment of relapsed/refractory (r/r) light chain (AL) amyloidosis. Notably, early data from the phase 1b/2 NEXICART-2 clinical trial (NCT06097832) evaluating the therapy in the United States were recently presented at the 2025 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting, held May 30 to June 3, in Chicago, Illinois.
At the conference CGTLive®’s sister site, OncLive®, spoke with Shahzad Raza, MD, a hematologist/oncologist at the Cleveland Clinic who coauthored the study presented at ASCO, about the key results and their implications. Afterwards, Raza was asked about future plans for evaluating the CAR-T product in AL amyloidosis and unanswered questions and challenges that still need to be addressed. Raza emphasized that while patients with advanced cardiac amyloidosis (stage 3b) were excluded from the current trial, future studies should explore its use in this high-risk group if safety and efficacy continue to hold. Raza stressed the urgent need for effective second-line treatments and suggested offering CAR-T therapy earlier in the disease course. He highlighted the potential for “treatment holidays,” where patients could avoid continuous therapies after receiving CAR-T, which could improve quality of life.
Raza also spoke about challenges in patient eligibility for treatment, emphasizing the importance of being free from active infections and other disease. He then mentioned his excitement about another presentation at ASCO, which focused on the use of teclistamab, a Bispecific T-cell engager (BiTE), for AL amyloidosis. He spoke about how teclistamab and CAR-T may allow for patients to have multiple treatment options for r/r AL amyloidosis in the future.
Click here to view more coverage of ASCO's 2025 Meeting.
REFERENCE
1. Landau H. Safety and efficacy data from Nexicart-2, the first US trial of CAR-T in R/R light chain (AL) amyloidosis, NXC-201. Presented at the 2025 ASCO Annual Meeting, held May 30 to June 3, in Chicago, Illinois. Abstract #7508
Eugenio Galli, MD, PhD, on Reexamining Frailty as a Barrier to CAR-T Treatment
June 16th 2025The hematologist at the Hematology and Stem Cell Transplants Unit of Fondazione Policlinico Universitario A. Gemelli IRCCS in Rome discussed a study on the effect of comorbidities in patients receiving CAR-T.
