Bhagirathbhai Dholaria, MBBS, on Progress With CAR T in Blood Cancers and Addressing Relapses

“Patients which would have traditionally been declined for high dose chemotherapy and autologous transplant for lymphoma, are able to receive CAR T-cell therapy, which is something. That speaks to the experience and the amount of knowledge which has been generated by Vanderbilt and other institutes around the globe, on how to best manage all the side effects and I think it's going to keepgetting better over time.”

CGTLive spoke with Bhagirathbhai Dholaria, MBBS, assistant professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, to learn more about his experience treating patients with hematologic malignancies with chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy in the outpatient setting. He discussed the progress that has been made in the field over the past 10 years and unmet needs that remain to be addressed, especially relapse prevention in multiple myeloma.

Dholaria was a coauthor on a study conducted at University of Vanderbilt to iuvnestugate outcomes with remote monitoring patients with large B-cell lymphoma treated with axicabtagene ciloleucel (axi-cel; Yescarta). The investigators found that safety and efficacy outcomes were similar between patients treated in inpatient and outpatient settings. Data from the retrospective analysis were presented at the 2023 Tandem Meetings |Transplantation & Cellular Therapy Meetings of ASTCT and CIBMTR, held in Orlando, Florida, February 15-19.

REFERENCE

Akosile TA, Dholaria B, Baer B, et al. The impact of telemedicine and wearable devices in improving the safety profile of outpatient chimeric antigen receptor T-Cell (CAR-T) therapies: A case-control study. Presented at: 2023 Tandem Meetings, February 15-18, Orlando, Florida. Abstract #201