Veit Bücklein, Dr Med, on Research Trends in Hematological Malignancy Cell Therapy
The postdoctoral researcher at Laboratory for Translational Cancer Immunology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, discussed research he was excited to see at ASH 2023 and in the field in general.
“I think one major topic that everyone’s talking about at the moment is sequencing of therapies. So, when it comes to treating patients with lymphoma, the big question always is, if we can find a smart strategy to sequence car t-cells vs bispecifics for example, because those are treatment platforms that are closely connected with each other, and I think there will be some more data on that.”
New research out of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Münche in Munich, Germany, has shown that female patients have significantly superior outcomes then male patients following treatment with axicabtagene ciloleucel (axi-cel, Kite Pharma), even after adjusting other known risk variables. Veit Bücklein, Dr Med, a postdoctoral researcher at the university’s Laboratory for Translational Cancer Immunology presented the findings in a poster at the 2023 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, held December 9-12, in San Diego, California. Axi-cel is a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy approved for relapsed/refractory large B-cell lymphoma (LBCL) under the name Yescarta.
CGTLive spoke with Bücklein to learn more about the new research and about the state of and recent trends with research in cell therapy for hematological malignancies. He shared a couple of updates from the ASH meeting that he was excited by and stressed that 2023 was a big year for starting to explore sequencing of cell therapies and related immunotherapies in the field. He also talked about how 2023 was the first year of using CAR T-cell therapy in second-line treatment in Europe.
Click here to read more coverage of the ASH 2023 meeting.
