Dr. Frederick Locke on KTE-C19 for Refractory NHL

Frederick Locke, MD, a medical oncologist in the Department of Blood and Marrow Transplant at Moffitt Cancer Center, and an assistant professor of Oncology at the University of South Florida, discusses KTE-C19 for the treatment of refractory aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL).

KTE-C19 is a Kite Pharma—manufactured autologous cell therapy product. After cells are collected from patients with refractory aggressive NHL, they are shipped to the Kite Pharma manufacturing facility and the gene for the chimeric-antigen receptor is inserted into T cells, explains Locke.

Thus far in the ongoing phase I/II ZUMA-1 study, seven patients have received therapy. It was deemed safe.

Eighty-six percent of patients who were treated developed cytokine release syndrome and one patient had grade 4 CRS. One hundred percent of patients developed neurologic toxicities due to KTE-C19 therapy. There was one case of grade 3 and one grade 4 neurologic toxicity.

Seventy-one percent of patients experienced a response, with 4 complete responses and 1 partial response observed, says Locke.