What is CAR-T cell therapy?

Chimeric antigen - receptor (CAR) - T cell therapy has revolutionized cancer treatment for the patients with advanced non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas (NHL) and leukemia who did not response to multiple treatments.

CAR-T cell therapy is a type of immunotherapy and uses white blood cells called killer T cells from patient’s own blood. The isolated T cells are genetically engineered in laboratory to have a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR), so that they can specifically recognize proteins in cancer cells including CD19 and kill them. The engineered killer T cells are produced in high numbers in petri dishes and then simply infused back into patients to treat cancer.

Approximately, 30-40% of patients with aggressive and relapsed large B cell lymphoma show lasting complete remission with some surviving over 3 years after the CAR-T cell therapy. It is such a remarkable advance for the patients with aggressive and relapsed NHL and leukemia, especially for those whom are with diffused large B- cell lymphoma, given that they have had little option after multiple treatments and typically survive less than 9 months. As any other cancer treatment, CAR-T cell therapy could cause adverse effects. The most serious ones are cytokine release syndrome or neurologic toxicity which sometimes can be fatal.

Some of the limitations of CAR-T cell therapy are a long processing time and high costs to produce CAR-T cells which may contribute to delay in starting the life-saving treatment. Moreover, more than 50% of patients do not respond to CAR-T cell therapy because the T cells isolated from patients may not be healthy due to the underlying disease.

To overcome these limitations, scientists and clinicians have been developing allogenic CAR-T or “off-the -shelf” T cell therapy using T cells from healthy donors, so CAR-T cells can be produced in bulk to ease the patient access. Repeated infusion of CAR-T cells could be also possible with allogenic CAR-T cell therapy. The recent results from phase I ALPHA study with large B cell or follicular lymphoma patients showed that 63% of 22 patients responded to the therapy, and most of the patients experienced tumor shrinkage. The adverse effects were similar to those with CAR-T cell therapy.

For more information about CAR-T cell therapy, visit www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/research/car-t-cells  or my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/17726-car-t-cell-therapy

​

Phase I ALPHA study for the patients with recurrent and relapsed large B-cell or follicular lymphoma is still recruiting patients. If you want to know more about the study and check your eligibility,  please speak with your oncology or email us at minji@MJpatientadvocatecom.

clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03939026

​

​

​