A New Breakthrough in Immunotherapy?TCR Technology helps Treat Myeloma

Posted by Bella Smith on March 28th, 2017

A clinical study showed that a new T cell receptor (TCR) therapy allowed 80% of patients with advanced myeloma to undergo a clinical response after autologous stem cell transplantation. The T cell receptor therapy used the human autoimmune system to identify and destroy tumor cells.

T cell modification

In this study, T-cells were modified to attack NY-ESO-1-expressed cancer cells. NY-ESO-1 is an antigen that is associated with tumor growth and poor prognosis. Multiple bone marrow contains the antigen.

In this study, patients received 2.4 billion NY-ESO-engineered CD3T cells after 2 days of autologous stem cell transplantation.

The patient T cells were first removed by a similar blood donation process, followed by reprogramming the cells. After implantation, these reorganized cells began to proliferate and look for expression antigenic peptides NY-ESO-1 and LAGE-1 in multiple myeloma cells.

In the I / II study, cell engineering studies in 20 patients were in a safe state, and the researchers followed 90% of patients after treatment. The researchers observed active antitumor activity in the patient: almost 70% of the patients had a complete response to the treatment after three months.

At an average follow-up of 21.1 months, 15 out of 20 patients survived, and 10 of they were undergoing further rehabilitation. About 14 people had a complete response to the therapy, and 2 had a good part-response. Until April 2015, the average follow-up period was 30.1 months, average free survival was 19.1 months and a median overall survival period increased to 32.1 months.

The researchers indicated that it was more important that none of the patients had macrophage activation syndrome or cytokine release syndrome, both of which were observed in other gene therapy studies, with symptoms of fever, nausea , chill, low blood pressure or rash.

Exciting results: antitumor activity and T cell persistence

The study says the study tells us that modified T cell receptors, especially T cells, are safe and show exciting antitumor activity and T cell persistence.

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