ARTICLE | Product Development
ASH22 could be IL-18’s watershed moment
CAR T data at ASH could trigger more development in one of oncology’s less crowded cytokine spaces
December 7, 2022 7:15 PM UTC
A striking 100% overall response rate in a small CAR T cell study at ASH could be an inflection point for the still-small field of IL-18-based cancer immunotherapies. The IL-18-secreting CD19 CAR T therapy from cell therapy pioneer Carl June’s lab could also address a growing unmet need: patients who’ve progressed after treatment with marketed CAR T therapies.
Lead study author Jakub Svoboda, an associate professor of medicine at University of Pennsylvania, told BioCentury that anti-CD19 CAR T cells have durable responses in 30-40% of third-line patients with relapsed/refractory diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL), and 40-50% of patients in the second-line setting, where two CAR therapies are approved so far. ...