Healio: CAR-T reinfusion lacks durability for younger patients with leukemia

A second round of T-cell therapy for children and young adults with relapsed or refractory B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) led to a small percentage of clinically meaningful responses, according to data presented by the University of Cincinnati and Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center's Christa Krupski, DO.

Krupski presented data from a retrospective study at the Tandem Meetings | Transplantation & Cellular Therapy Meetings of ASTCT and CIBMTR. 

The study focused on a drug called Tisagenlecleucel, also known as tisa-cel, that has historically been effective in approximately 80% of younger patients with B-cell ALL, Krupski said. After the first infusion of tisa-cel, there are few treatment options.

Krupski reported a second round of tisa-cel infusion has limited effectiveness and should be given as a bridge toward another treatment.

“We have shown that reinfusion with [tisagenlecleucel] is not a definitive therapy,” said Krupski, professor in the department of pediatrics at UC and pediatric bone marrow transplant physician at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. “The remissions it produces are unlikely to be long lasting, so physicians who treat these patients will need to have something else in mind before moving forward.

“It needs to be a bridge to something, and that something, in my opinion, is a transplant for definitive therapy," Krupski continued.

Read the Healio article.

Featured photo of acute lymphoblastic leukemia cells courtesy of iStock.