Dr. Brentjens on Obstacles with CAR T-Cell Therapy in Hematologic Malignancies

Renier Brentjens, MD, PhD, associate professor, chief, Cellular Therapeutics Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses challenges facing chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy for patients with hematologic malignancies.

The FDA first approved a CAR T-cell therapy in August 2017 authorized the use of tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah); however, there were many challenges to overcome before the approval could be accomplished, says Brentjens.

There were many obstacles with the ability of CAR T-cell therapy to generate T cells that persisted long enough to kill off tumor cells. There are now more than 100 laboratories and pharmaceutical companies that have started investing in this technology, and the number of groups that are testing this in the preclinical and clinical setting has expanded rapidly, explains Brentjens.

According to Brentjens, the amount of knowledge of CAR T-cell therapy has increased compared with the first 10 to 15 years that it was explored in the academic setting. It is hard to predict where this technology will go in the future, says Brentjens, but advancements will be made more rapidly.