The latest results of clinical trials of more than 125 patients testing an investigational personalized cellular therapy known as CTL019 was recently presented by a University of Pennsylvania research team at the 56th American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting. Highlights of the new trial results include a response rate of more than 90 percent among pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia patients, and results from the first lymphoma trials testing the approach, including a 100 percent response rate among follicular lymphoma patients and 45 percent response rate among those with diffuse large B cell lymphoma. Dr. Carl June, the research team leader, noted, “We have now treated more than 125 patients in our trials of the chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) therapy CTL019, and with each patient, we learn more and more about the potential of this therapy." The personalized cellular therapy approach begins with patients’ own immune cells, collected through a procedure similar to dialysis. The cells are then engineered in a laboratory and infused back into patients’ bodies after being trained to hunt and kill their cancer cells. All patients who enroll in the trials have cancers that have progressed despite multiple conventional therapies.
Read the Department of Communications news release.