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VIDEO: Pembrolizumab may improve response to CAR T-cell therapy in children with ALL
CHICAGO — The combination of pembrolizumab and CAR T-cell therapy appeared safe and effective in a subset of patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia who did not respond to CAR T-cell therapy or who relapsed due to poor CAR T-cell expansion and persistence, according to a study presented at the ASCO Annual Meeting.
Shannon L. Maude, MD, PhD, attending physician in the cancer center at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and colleagues evaluated whether PD-1 checkpoint pathway inhibition with pembrolizumab (Keytruda, Merck) could improve CAR T-cell expansion, function and persistence.
Next, Maude and colleagues would like to conduct a study among a larger group of children with ALL, in which patients with poor persistence of anti-CD19 CAR T cells are systematically treated with checkpoint blockade.
“We don’t have a lot of data in ALL and whether immune checkpoints play a large role,” Maude said. “It will be important to study that in the future, and whether checkpoints, like PD-1 and PD-L1 pathways, are really important in ALL in general or maybe just in the setting of engineered T-cell therapy.” – by Kristie L. Kahl
Disclosure: Maude reports consultant fees and research funding from Novartis.