Key questions in the field of CD19 CAR T-cell therapy

At the 42nd Annual Meeting of the European Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (EBMT), held in Valencia, Spain, Catherine Bollard, MD from Children’s National Health System, Washington, D.C., gives an overview of the field of CD19 chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cells. Dr Bollard discusses CAR T-cells for the treatment of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), where they give a response rate in the order of 90%, and in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and non-Hodgkin lymphoma, where response rate is lower at 50%. There are many outstanding questions related to the clinical development of CAR T-cell therapy, including understanding how long CAR T-cells remain active in a patient and their financial cost compared with transplants.