While this is not a CLL trial, this study does illustrate how potent CAR-T therapy can be in blood cancer patients, including those with a “dismal prognosis” who have experienced multiple prior therapies.
The headlines read that longer-term follow-up data from Phase 1b/2 CARTITUDE-1 study demonstrate a 100% overall response rate, 86% stringent complete response rate at a median of 11.5 months, and 86% progression-free survival at nine months.
There were of course some expected adverse events associated with CAR-T and sadly 3 deaths among the 29 patients treated.
Overall, this progress in CAR-T therapy bodes well for all blood cancer patients, as 22 of 29 of these difficult to treat MM patients were still progression free when the data was analyzed.
Here is the link to the trial. Here is the news release that offers much greater detail.