Veit Bücklein, Dr Med, on Investigating Sex Differences on CAR T Outcomes in Large B-Cell Lymphoma

“We looked at the outcomes of males and females. And we see that female patients receiving CD19 CAR T-cell therapy have significantly higher response rates. The objective response rate (ORR) was 88% in female patients versus 75% in male patients, and then we also see significant differences in progression free survival (PFS) and also in the unmatched analysis in overall survival (OS). So female patients have significantly superior PFS and OS.”

Female patients have significantly superior outcomes then male patients following treatment with axicabtagene ciloleucel (axi-cel; Yescarta, Kite) for relapsed/refractory large B-cell lymphoma (LBCL) even after adjusting other known risk variables.These data were presented in a poster at the 2023 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, held December 9-12, in San Diego, California, by Veit Bücklein, Dr Med, postdoctoral researcher, Laboratory for Translational Cancer Immunology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.

Bücklein and colleagues analyzed data from 119 male and 95 female patients with similar baseline patient characteristics except for ferritin levels (significantly higher in male patients prior to lymphodepletion). The investigators found that safety outcomes were similar between sexes but ORR was 88% in females compared with 75% in males (P = .03), PFS was not reached compared to 4.2 months (P = .005), and OS was not reached compared with 22.6 months (P = .028), respectively.

CGTLive spoke with Bücklein to learn more about the new research. He shared the rationale behind it and the design of the analysis.

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

REFERENCE

Buecklein VL, Rejeski K, Perez A, et al. Impact of sex on clinical outcomes after CD19 CAR T-cell therapy for large B-cell lymphoma: Response and survival are significantly superior in female compared to male patients. Presented at: 2023 ASH Annual Meeting & Exposition, December 9-12; San Diego, California. Abstract 3787.