ASCO is Here! (With CAR-T Research)

Today is the first day of the ASCO conference. It's the annual gathering of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. Typically, the conference brings thousands of cancer doctors, researchers, nurses, other health professionals, and patients and survivors into one big building so they can all learn about the latest in cancer.

This year, the conference is virtual -- all of it will be online. That's good news for me. ASCO very kindly made it free for patients advocates to attend this year (doctors have to pay a few hundred dollars), and they changed the definition of "advocate" to include people who don't work for cancer organizations (I had a small role in making that change happen). All of this means I can be a part of the conference. Normally, I couldn't afford the flight and hotel (this year's it's in Chicago). I always have access to abstracts, but this year I'll also have access to some other things like seminars and webcasts -- live events that only registered folks get to experience.

If you've been reading for a while, you know that, for me, this is Cancer Nerd Heaven.

My plan is to report what I find, as I usually do with ASCO. I'm hoping the virtual stuff will give me more to report.

I'm guessing that, as I usually do, I'll be reporting on this for a couple of weeks, even though the conference is officially just a few days.

My first report is on a podcast. ASCO News Daily, which gives reports about the conference every day, asked Dr. John Sweetenham, a lymphoma expert, to talk about some of the more important research about blood cancers that will be presented at ASCO. (You should be able to hear his whole 15 minute podcast here.)

The first one he talked about was about Follicular Lymphoma: "Interim analysis of ZUMA-5: A phase II study of axicabtagene ciloleucel (axi-cel) in patients (pts) with relapsed/refractory indolent non-Hodgkin lymphoma (R/R iNHL)."

The presentation focuses on the ZUMA-5 trial. There are a bunch of ZUMA trials (at least 5!), and they all focus on CAR-T. (If you need a refresher on what CAR-T is, look at what I said about it during last year's ASCO conference.)

CAR-T is approved for some types of lymphoma, including aggressive types like Transformed FL. The ZUMA-5 trial looks at less aggressive type of FL (which is what most of us have). It specifically looks at one type of CAR-T called Axi-cel, and the effects on FL patients who are relapsed or refractory (that is, their last treatment stopped working, or didn't work at all).  The patients in the study also had at least two previous treatments.

The study had 94 patients with indolent (slow-growing) lymphoma, 80 of them with Follicular Lymphoma.

Results are great. After about a year of follow-up, 94% of patients had a Response, with 73% having a Complete Response. Of the FL patients, the response was even better -- 95% Overall Response, with 80% getting a Complete Response.

This is being reported at about the same time the FDA has begun looking at another CAR-T, Kymriah, for Relapsed/Refractory FL patients. That's good news for those of us who have had treatments before. There are lots of barriers to this being a common treatment -- it's very expensive, since each individual patient gets a treatment that is created specifically for them -- but the cost might come down over time.

And since this was the first research that a lymphoma mentioned in his blood cancer list, I think we can say this one is a big deal to cancer experts. I will continue to keep an eye out for others that experts seem excited about, and I will share the ones that I find interesting, too (even if the experts aren't as excited about them).

Lots to be hopeful about at this time of year.