Chinese professor shares experience in CAR-T therapy at Conference

Top scholars from China and abroad met online to discuss academic developments with a focus on cutting-edge technologies contributing to global medical development and worldwide health during the 26th Asia-Pacific Bone and Marrow Transplantation Congress, which was held from Oct 14 to 17.

In the CAR-T academic session on Oct 16, international experts and scholars gave presentations and exchanged views on the role of CAR-T cell therapy in hematological tumors. Professor Zhao Weili from Ruijin Hospital of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine made a closing speech and shared the Chinese experience with CAR-T therapy.

Zhao discussed the treatment of two diffuse large B-cell lymphoma patients in China who received CAR-T cell therapy. Through a comprehensive presentation of patient characteristics, treatment process, adverse events management post CAR-T, and efficacy assessment, she demonstrated the outstanding efficacy of CAR-T for the treatment of lymphoma, the valuable Chinese experience in the whole process of CAR-T management, as well as current challenges and effective strategies to tackle them.

The Chinese case study presented by Zhao was a 57-year-old female, and the first patient enrolled in the pre-marketing clinical trial in China. She was diagnosed with Non-GCB DLBCL at Ann Arbor stage II with an IPI score of 2. After diagnosis, the patient received multiple rounds of treatment including R-CHOP, R2-ICE and R2-GDP, all of which resulted in disease progression.

Thus, she decided to try CAR-T immunotherapy. A clinical study in November 2018 used Axicabtagene Ciloleucel (Axi-Cel) to achieve a good outcome after CAR-T re-infusion, with the efficacy assessment showing partial remission by day 28 and complete remission by day 90 after re-infusion. Moreover, the patient’s complete remission status has been maintained for almost 3 years.