Dr. Shah on CAR T-Cell Therapy in Pediatric ALL

Nirali N. Shah, MD, MHSc, head of the hematologic malignancies section of the Pediatric Oncology Branch at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Center for Cancer Research, discusses the use of CAR T-cell therapy in pediatric patients with acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL).

There is currently one FDA-approved construct for children with relapsed/refractory ALL, tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah), which is currently used for patients who have failed frontline therapy. The goal for using tisagenlecleucel is to try to achieve a durable remission, explains Shah. Physicians are not currently able to predict what patients are going to be cured in the long term and who is going to relapse on CAR T-cell therapy, says Shah.

At the NCI, Shah leads a pediatric and young adult study targeting CD22, which is an alternate antigen. This trial examines patients who relapsed after CD19-directed CAR-based strategies and have CD19-negative disease, concludes Shah.