Piers Blombery, MBBS, PhD, on Looking Deeper Into Effects of CAR T After CAR+ Lymphoma

“There are clearly multiple etiologies in this case. And that may well explain why we don't see it more frequently. CAR-T, regardless of the type of technology used, involves disrupting the genome, and we know that cancer is a genetic disease, but this is clearly obviously a very rare event. So, it would make sense that there are actually multiple contributing factors in order for all of this to happen.”

This is the second part of an interview. To view the first part, click here.

A patient with multiple myeloma treated with ciltacabtagene ciloleucel (Carvykti; Janssen, Legend Biotech) in the phase 3 CARTITUDE-4 study (NCT04181827) developed a case of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)+ T-cell lymphoma due to lentiviral transduction. The case study, from the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Australia, was reported n an abstract accepted to the 2023 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, held December 9-12, in San Diego, California, as an online publication.

CGTLive spoke with the abstract’s senior author, Piers Blombery, MBBS, PhD, associate professor, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, and head, Wilson Centre for Blood Cancer Genomics, to learn more about the potential contributors to the case of CAR+ lymphoma. He described the patient’s case, treatment history, and current treatment regimen. He discussed questions that remain with the case that his team is trying to answer to better understand the CAR+ lymphoma, as well as further research that he would like to see done to better understand the effects of CAR T-cell therapy. He also touched on other adverse events that may occur as a result of CAR T treatment.

Click here to view more coverage of the ASH 2023 meeting.

REFERENCE

Harrison SJ. Nguyen T, Rahman M, et al. CAR+ T-Cell lymphoma post ciltacabtagene autoleucel therapy for relapsed refractory multiple myeloma. Blood (2023): 142; 1. 6939. doi: 10.1182/blood-2023-178806