Cancer therapy that engineers patient white blood cells to recognize and
destroy tumors in their body posts impressive phase II result: 47% of
patients experienced a complete remission, 5x better than current
standard of care.
Abstract
Kite Pharma is a biotech company that manufactures CAR-T cells.
Essentially, CAR-T cells are T-cells taken from a patient, engineered to
recognize and destroy the patient’s tumor, and then put back in the body
to kill the cancer cells. The CAR-T concept has been exciting
researchers for several years now, but clinical studies were typically
small and mostly focused on testing the safety of the technology. Last
night, KITE Pharma released new data from their ongoing pivotal (meaning
intended to be used to apply for FDA approval) phase II study using
CAR-T cells in Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. The results were very impressive.
KTE-C19 (the CAR-T drug) met the primary endpoint of objective response
rate (ORR), p < 0.0001, with an ORR of 76 percent, including
47 percent complete remissions (CR). Historically, standard of care has
an 8% CR rate for these patients. While very exciting, there are still
several concerns with the technology: namely safety, and duration of
remission. A number of patients experienced adverse events related to
the drug, and two died as a result of treatment. Additionally, while
47% of patients experienced a complete remission, some had relapsed
three months later. This is part of the Science Discussion Series, so I
will try to check in intermittently during the day to help discuss this
clinical trial, CAR-T cells and other cool technologies in the
immunotherapy space.