Daniela van Eickels, MD, PhD, MPH, on Bristol Myers Squibb’s Development of Cell Therapy for Autoimmune Disease

“Generally speaking, we are very, very excited about the concept of deep immune reset. It's something that we are driving with utmost urgency, knowing that there are currently patients that are really suboptimally treated. We hope that by accelerating [this approach] we will really bring a real value to those patients.”

Over the past 1 to 2 years, many companies and academic institutions have joined the race to bring chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapy, which originally proved its mettle as a treatment for hematological malignancies, to the field of autoimmune disease. Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) is one such company. Notably, BMS already has an FDA approved CD19-directed CAR-T product, lisocabtagene maraleucel (liso-cel, marketed as Breyanzi), which is available for several leukemia and lymphoma indications. Now, however, the company is also exploring the potential of CD19-directed CAR-T in autoimmune diseases including lupus, system sclerosis, idiopathic inflammatory myopathies, and multiple sclerosis. CD19-XT, the company’s lead CAR-T candidate for autoimmune disease, is currently being evaluated in 2 multicohort clinical trials. BMS expects to present initial data from one of these studies at the 2024 American College of Rheumatology (ACR) Convergance, which will be held November 14 to 19 in Washington, DC. Notably, the presentation will be given by primary investigator Georg Schett, MD, the vice president of research and a professor of internal medicine at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg, who has previously evaluated the potential of CAR-T therapy to bring about an “immune system reset” for patients with autoimmune diseases in earlier academic clinical research.

In anticipation of the upcoming conference, CGTLive® interviewed Daniela van Eickels, MD, PhD, MPH, the vice president and head of medical affairs for Bristol Myers Squibb’s Cell Therapy Organization, about the company’s progress thus far. Eickels discussed BMS’s plans in the field of cell therapy for autoimmune disease and emphasized the potential of CAR-T treatments to have a transformative effect for some patients.