Ignacio Melero
Professor of Immunology at the University of Navarra, CIMA researcher and co-director of the Department of Immunology and Immunotherapy at the Clínica Universidad de Navarra.
It is good news that patients treated with CAR-T cells have sustained clinical benefit over time. It is worth noting that we believe that the CAR-Ts that were used more than a decade ago at Baylor College of Medicine for the treatment of neuroblastoma have now been greatly improved by engineering co-stimulus domains.
The persistence of circulating CAR-T cells for years is another data point of interest. In this trial one of the 'tricks' was that part of the lymphocytes genetically transferred to be CAR-T cells were specific for a virus that latently infects most of the population (Epstein Barr virus). This was intended to see if they had any advantage in being stimulated by viral antigens compared to CAR-Ts of unknown specificity. The advantage is not clearly demonstrated in the article, but there is some suggestive data that the Epstein Barr virus antigen-specific populations are functionally better endowed.
Neuroblastoma is a dreaded pediatric solid tumor, and that the duration of remissions obtained with treatment with anti-GD2 CAR-Ts can be so long is excellent news for the immunotherapy community.