Brian Van Tine, MD, PhD, on Continued Durability of Afami-Cel in Synovial Sarcoma

"SPEARHEAD is one of the most interesting things I've had the privilege of working on in my career for synovial sarcoma patients that are not only HLA*02, but also express the MAGE-A4 antigen. The ability to take patients’ T-cells out of their body, remanufacture them and put them back, has led to a T spear therapy for synovial sarcoma that has deep and durable responses. In fact, it's just been made public that they're now going for a traditional approval and no longer an accelerated approval, because the data is that strong.”

Patients with advanced synovial sarcoma treated with afamitresgene autoleucel (afami-cel; AdaptImmune) T-cell receptor SPEAR T-cell therapy in the phase 2 SPEARHEAD-1 trial (NCT04044768) have continued to experience a survival benefit. Updated survival data from the trial were presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2023 Annual Meeting, held June 2-6, in Chicago, Illinois, by Brian Van Tine, MD, PhD, professor, medicine and pediatrics, Washington University in St. Louis.

CGTLive™’s sister site, OncLive™, spoke with Van Tine to learn more about the updated data survival data, which continues to demonstrate a durable and deep response in treated patients. He noted that AdaptImmune is no longer pursuing an accelerated approval for afami-cel in favor of a traditional approval. He also touched on the manageable safety profile of afami-cel, which includes transient cases of cytokine release syndrome but no new, long-term safety signals. He shared possible next steps for the platform, including targeted other antigens besides MAGE-A4.

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REFERENCE

Van Tine BA, Ganjoo KN, Blay JY, et al. The SPEARHEAD-1 trial of afamitresgene autoleucel (afami-cel [formerly ADP-A2M4]): Analysis of overall survival in advanced synovial sarcoma. Presented at: ASCO 2023 Annual Meeting; June 2-6; Chicago, Illinois. Poster #497