Axi-Cel Demonstrates Efficacy in Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, Including DLBCL

Caron Jacobson, MD, a senior physician and medical director of the Immune Effector Cell Therapy Program at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and an assistant professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, discusses the survival and response data for axicabtagene ciloleucel (axi-cel) from the phase 1/2 ZUMA-1 trial (NCT02348216).

Axi-cel, which is a CD19-directed chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, was looked at for the treatment of patients with relapsed/refractory aggressive B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphomas, including diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). These patients were all chemotherapy-refractory and had no other standard effective treatment options. Jacobson says in historical studies, these patients’ median overall survival (OS) would have been expected to be around the order of about 6 months. With a single infusion of axi-cel on this trial, there were responses in over 80% of patients and complete responses in over 50%.

With the 3-year data, and eventually the 4-year data, investigators will see that somewhere between 40% and 50% of patients maintain their response, which is very promising, Jacobson says. That could potentially mean patients could be cured with their single infusion of their CAR cells.