ZUMA-1 CAR-T Trial

OncLive has been posting some really excellent stuff lately.

A couple of days ago, they posted a piece called "Lead ZUMA-1 Researcher Highlights CAR T CellFindings in NHL." The article is a short interview with Dr. Frederick Locke of the Moffitt Cancer center in Florida. He discusses the ZUMA-1 trial, which focused on using CAR-T against aggressive lymphomas, including DBLCL and transformed Follicular Lymphoma.

There has already been some stuff written about this trial (including the link above, which gets into the 6 month follow-up for the trial, and this on the 3 month follow-up). This interview with Dr. Locke gets into a little more detail about the study and its results. (I was hoping he would talk a little more of the transformed FL patients, specifically, but he doesn't.)

But he does highlight some great things: the very high manufacturing rate of 99% (in CAR-T treatments, a patient's T cells are removed and messed with so they learn to attack cancer cells, so almost every patient was successful in going through this process); the high Response rates (82% Overall Response, and 54% Complete Response); and the manageable, even reversible side effects (which included Cytokine Release Syndrome, where the body is overwhelmed by the sudden flood of immune cells responding to the problem) and some neurologic problems.

So while the ZUMA-1 trial isn't specifically about the FL that most of us have, it should give us hope about CAR-T in general.

Interesting interview. I recommend you read the whole thing.