How does CAR T-cell therapy work and what are the goals? Dr. Doris Hansen, a multiple myeloma specialist at Moffitt Cancer Center, explains how CAR T-cell therapy fights myeloma by using a person’s own cells and discusses the goal of this treatment: helping patients stay treatment-free for as long as possible.
Dr. Doris Hansen is an Assistant Member in the Department of Blood and Marrow Transplant and Cellular Immunotherapy at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, FL. Learn more about Dr. Hansen.
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Transcript
Katherine Banwell:
Before we go any further, I’d like to talk about the basics. What exactly is CAR T-cell therapy?
Dr. Doris Hansen:
That’s a great question. So, CAR T-cell therapy’s really a revolutionary therapy for multiple myeloma. It’s a type of treatment where we collect a patient’s own white blood cells, or a type of white blood cell known as a T cell, and we essentially genetically manufacture that cell so that it represents, or has active antimyeloma properties, or antimyeloma proteins.
So, when those CAR T cells, or genetically modified cells, are infused back into the patient, every time that those car T cells see a myeloma cell, they become activated, and they become activated to destroy the cancer. In theory, as I’d like to think about these, these are like your soldiers against myeloma, or your superpowered, superwomen, supermen, to kind of go after the bad guys, after the myeloma.
Katherine Banwell:
What are the goals of CAR T-cell therapy?
Dr. Doris Hansen:
So, the goal of CAR T-cell therapy’s really to get the deepest level of response that we can with this treatment. For example, for a patient with multiple myeloma, the goal would be to get them into a complete remission without any evidence of measurable residual disease, or to get them in, as we call it, MRD-negative status.
And really, in patients who are able to get that type of response, the goal would be to really be treatment-free for as long as possible. One of the immunotherapies that we have available now is called ciltacabtagene autoleucel, or cilta-cel, or Carvykti, as some might know it.
But that treatment, some recent data was presented that basically showed the median duration of response or survival was five years, and we saw that a third of those patients were really still in remission. So, treatment-free and without evidence of disease at five years, and these were heavily pretreated patients. And we have never seen anything like that in myeloma. So, really, the goal is, get the best response, and hopefully treatment-free as long as possible, so our patients can have a good quality of life.