Exploring CAR T Cells in Prostate Cancer

Tanya Dorff, MD, a medical oncologist, section chief of Genitourinary Disease Program, and associate professor in the Department of Medical Oncology & Therapeutics Research at City of Hope, discusses the introduction of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy into the prostate cancer landscape.

Dorff says that bringing CAR T cells to the solid tumor landscape following much success in hematologic malignancies is not easy. The location of a tumor and the heterogeneity of many solid tumors comes with treatment challenges that do not occur in hematologic malignancies.

What is unique with the prostate cancer space is that specific targets do exist that have the potential to help drive the development of CAR T cells for the treatment of prostate cancer.

0:07 | This is a technology that's been super successful in hematologic malignancies. But there are certainly challenges in bringing it into solid tumors, and particularly, I would say for prostate cancer because of the differences in the kinds of diseases and where they reside and tumor heterogeneity in solid tumors that you don't see with leukemias and lymphomas.

0:33 | But that being said, there are a number of really specific targets that define prostate cancer cells that we can use to produce car T cells. And they've been shown in preclinical models to really be able to find the prostate cancer and destroy it. And so, it's just a question of how to make that translate into clinical trials and what to expect in terms of toxicity. It just looks completely different than hematologic malignancies although, of course, we're learning from the experience in those diseases.