Cell therapy appears safe and effective for lymphoma in remission

A study led by researchers at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine suggests that CAR-T immunotherapy remains a viable option for patients who have lymphoma that goes into remission before the cell therapy begins.

Most patients receiving cell therapy, a form of immunotherapy that uses immune cells engineered to recognize and attack the patient’s cancer, desperately need it. For some, it comes after many other treatments have failed. But Wang noticed an odd phenomenon in the past few years when treating lymphoma patients with this form of therapy: Some of his patients went into complete remission before the cells ever touched their bodies.

This uncommon scenario occurs during the process of getting to cell therapy, which in the case of Wang’s study uses a kind of engineered immune cell known as CAR-T cells. When a patient starts the process, there’s a waiting period of three to five weeks before they get the treatment. Insurance approval is needed, and the cells themselves need to be manufactured from the patient’s own cells. But many of these patients are very sick with their cancer, so physicians will often treat them with a short course of chemotherapy or other drugs to tamp down the symptoms.

A small handful of these patients end up in remission during this waiting period treatment, the clinicians have found.

They found that this group of patients had a 43% probability of progression-free survival over the two years following their treatment, about the same percentage as patients in the registry who were not in remission when they received CAR-T. However, the patients in remission had very low levels of toxicities related to their cell therapies, namely an immune overreaction known as cytokine release syndrome and neurotoxicity, two side effects that can sometimes accompany CAR-T cell therapy.

“That prompted this dilemma: Now what are we supposed to do?” Wang said. “Should we change the plan or give the therapy anyway? We just didn’t have a lot of information on this scenario.”

Reference: Cell therapy appears safe and effective for lymphoma in remission; UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI MILLER SCHOOL OF MEDICINE