Positive results for CAR T-cell Therapy in Follicular Lymphoma

The scientific journal Blood recently published a commentary by Dr Michael Bishop examining the effects of chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR T-cell) therapy in follicular lymphoma patients. Below is a summary of the main findings.

The paper summarises the results of CAR T-cell therapy from three separate studies that were conducted in patients with refractory or relapsed follicular lymphoma (FL) & transformed lymphoma (tFL).

The first study involved 6 FL patients treated with CAR T-cell therapy. All 6 patients responded to the treatment with 5 of the patients experiencing complete remission.

The second study treated 14 FL patients with CAR T-cell therapy. Ten of the patients (71%) experienced complete remission and 89% responded to treatment.

The third study examined the effect of CAR T-cell therapy in 8 FL patients and 13 tFL patients. There was an 88% response rate to CAR T-cell in the FL patients all of which showed a sustained response. In the tFL patients, there was a 46% response rate to CAR T-cell, all of which had complete remission. The paper goes on to explain why the response rate may have been lower in tFL patients.

The results are very encouraging and provide great hope for refractory and relapsed follicular lymphoma patients.