Samer Srour, MB ChB, MS, on Improving CAR T-Cell Therapy for Solid Tumors
The assistant professor of stem cell transplantation at MD Anderson Cancer Center discussed positive data in ccRCC that he believes should excite the solid tumor field as a whole.
"ALLO-316 indeed has very unique features in the way it was genetically engineered. So, in addition to knocking out the CD52 to allow the use of anti-CD52 ALLO-647 to be used in the conditioning, and hence improve the expansion and persistence of the CAR T-cell, it also has some other knockout features which prevents graft versus host disease. Also, other features allow masking the CD70 on the CAR construct itself.”
The allogeneic chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy ALLO-316 (Allogene Therapeutics) demonstrated antitumor activity with a manageable safety profile in participants with advanced or metastatic CD70+ clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC). These data, from the phase 1 TRAVERSE study (NCT04696731), were presented at the American Associated for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2023, held April 14-19 in Orlando, Florida, by Samer Srour, MB ChB, MS, assistant professor, stem cell transplantation, MD Anderson Cancer Center.
CGTLive™’s sister site, OncLive™, spoke with Srour about ALLO-316's unique advantages as a CAR T-cell therapy, including multiple knockouts designed to allow for increased expansion, persistence, and tolerability of the cells. He shared his hope that the advances behind ALLO-316 can be expanded to allow for improve treatment of other solid tumors cancers in addition to ccRCC. He stressed the importance of being able to show preliminary efficacy in treating solid tumors with CAR T-cell therapy and encouraged oncologists to recommend these treatments and trials to their patients and for researchers to continue to improve treatment paradigms.
