Cancer immunotherapy setbacks with CAR T cell therapy
A promising fresh cancer treatment is facing a deadly setback
Cancer cells seen on a large screen connected to a microscope at the CeBit computer fair in Hanover, Germany, in 2012. Reuters
- Cancer immunotherapy, or treatments that use the figure’s immune system, have been gaining traction in the past few years.
- That’s especially true with a group of therapies called “checkpoint inhibitors.”
- But there have been some setbacks to other approaches, including cell therapies, with some cases turning deadly.
We’re kicking off to get a clearer picture of some of the consequences of cancer immunotherapy, a fresh area of therapies that corset the assets’s immune system to take on cancer cells.
The drugs have generated a lot of excitement for the revolutionary way they treat cancer. The drugs don’t have the same side effects as chemotherapy, and in cases like that of former President Jimmy Carter, people have ended up being cancer-free.
But now, as more data comes out and newer swings of drugs get closer to approval, that excitement is kicking off to get tempered in the face of deadly side effects and failed trials.
Facing setbacks
The very first of these treatments are called checkpoint inhibitors. Most people have a type of protein that stops their immune system from fighting the cancerous cells. These checkpoint inhibitors block those proteins. It’s like taking down a guard tower, permitting the figure’s immune system to flood past a barrier and get to work killing and clearing away the cancer cells.
Checkpoint inhibitors were very first approved to treat melanoma but have gone on to tackle lung cancer, bladder cancer, blood cancers, and other cancers. There are now six approved checkpoint inhibitors.
But they’re far from ideal. For one, not everyone is responding to the drugs – for advanced stages of melanoma, the number of treated people still alive after two years was about 35%, compared with 29.7% over the same time for those taking chemotherapy. And sometimes fresh checkpoint inhibitors under development have failed key trials. The drugs also tend to be expensive, costing more than $100,000 for a course of treatment. And there are even reports that in some patients, the checkpoint inhibitors could be speeding up tumor growth.
Now a 2nd wave of cancer immunotherapy is facing some challenges. The very personalized treatment is called CAR T-cell therapy. Brief for “chimeric antigen receptor” T-cell therapy, the treatment takes a person’s own cells, liquidates them from the assets, reengineers them, and then puts the cells back in the assets where they can attack a particular cancer cell.
But on Monday, Kite Pharma exposed that one person had died while in a clinical trial for its late-stage CAR-T therapy from cerebral edema, a condition in which excessive fluid causes the brain to erect. It was not the very first time these therapies had experienced that severe side effect.
In July, another CAR-T company, Juno Therapeutics, said four people in its clinical trials had died, all from cerebral edema. It’s dampened the excitement that people once had for the therapy.
‘A long way to go’
A tray containing cancer cells sitting on an optical microscope in the Nanomedicine Lab at UCL’s School of Pharmacy in London. REUTERS/Suzanne Plunkett
The T-cell therapies are “assassins,” Matt Hawryluk, the chief business officer of Gritstone Oncology, told Business Insider. That makes them a truly powerful weapon, he said, but that can be good and bad depending on whether it’s hitting the intended cancer target or accidentally affecting other parts of the assets.
Gritstone is working on another type of cancer immunotherapy called cancer vaccines that seeks to help amplify the assets’s immune system to fight off cancer cells.
Even with the deaths that have been reported, there still could be an upside to treating some patients with the drug even if deadly risks are affixed.
“I feel there is a long way to go,” Roman Yelensky, the chief technology officer at Gritstone Oncology, told Business Insider. “And ultimately if in many cases it’s curing patients, we have to take the risk and then manage the benefits.”
Kelly Page, Takeda’s vice president of strategic planning in oncology, said this wasn’t all too different from the speed bumps the very first immunotherapies (namely the checkpoint inhibitors) experienced when they very first hit the field. “They were technologies before their time,” she said.
Researchers had a hard time monitoring how the immune system reacted with those therapies for a while before figuring out how to do it more securely.
“I think some of the other modalities, whether it be CAR-Ts or whatever, are going to go through that same thing,” Page said. “There’s this fight every time you bring in a fresh modality, but once you figure it out, it’s fantastic.”
Cancer immunotherapy setbacks with CAR T cell therapy
A promising fresh cancer treatment is facing a deadly setback
Cancer cells seen on a large screen connected to a microscope at the CeBit computer fair in Hanover, Germany, in 2012. Reuters
- Cancer immunotherapy, or treatments that use the assets’s immune system, have been gaining traction in the past few years.
- That’s especially true with a group of therapies called “checkpoint inhibitors.”
- But there have been some setbacks to other approaches, including cell therapies, with some cases turning deadly.
We’re embarking to get a clearer picture of some of the consequences of cancer immunotherapy, a fresh area of therapies that corset the assets’s immune system to take on cancer cells.
The drugs have generated a lot of excitement for the revolutionary way they treat cancer. The drugs don’t have the same side effects as chemotherapy, and in cases like that of former President Jimmy Carter, people have ended up being cancer-free.
But now, as more data comes out and newer flaps of drugs get closer to approval, that excitement is commencing to get tempered in the face of deadly side effects and failed trials.
Facing setbacks
The very first of these treatments are called checkpoint inhibitors. Most people have a type of protein that stops their immune system from fighting the cancerous cells. These checkpoint inhibitors block those proteins. It’s like taking down a guard tower, permitting the assets’s immune system to flood past a barrier and get to work killing and clearing away the cancer cells.
Checkpoint inhibitors were very first approved to treat melanoma but have gone on to tackle lung cancer, bladder cancer, blood cancers, and other cancers. There are now six approved checkpoint inhibitors.
But they’re far from flawless. For one, not everyone is responding to the drugs – for advanced stages of melanoma, the number of treated people still alive after two years was about 35%, compared with 29.7% over the same time for those taking chemotherapy. And sometimes fresh checkpoint inhibitors under development have failed key trials. The drugs also tend to be expensive, costing more than $100,000 for a course of treatment. And there are even reports that in some patients, the checkpoint inhibitors could be speeding up tumor growth.
Now a 2nd wave of cancer immunotherapy is facing some challenges. The very personalized treatment is called CAR T-cell therapy. Brief for “chimeric antigen receptor” T-cell therapy, the treatment takes a person’s own cells, liquidates them from the assets, reengineers them, and then puts the cells back in the assets where they can attack a particular cancer cell.
But on Monday, Kite Pharma exposed that one person had died while in a clinical trial for its late-stage CAR-T therapy from cerebral edema, a condition in which excessive fluid causes the brain to erect. It was not the very first time these therapies had experienced that severe side effect.
In July, another CAR-T company, Juno Therapeutics, said four people in its clinical trials had died, all from cerebral edema. It’s dampened the excitement that people once had for the therapy.
‘A long way to go’
A tray containing cancer cells sitting on an optical microscope in the Nanomedicine Lab at UCL’s School of Pharmacy in London. REUTERS/Suzanne Plunkett
The T-cell therapies are “assassins,” Matt Hawryluk, the chief business officer of Gritstone Oncology, told Business Insider. That makes them a indeed powerful weapon, he said, but that can be good and bad depending on whether it’s hitting the intended cancer target or accidentally affecting other parts of the figure.
Gritstone is working on another type of cancer immunotherapy called cancer vaccines that seeks to help amplify the bod’s immune system to fight off cancer cells.
Even with the deaths that have been reported, there still could be an upside to treating some patients with the drug even if deadly risks are affixed.
“I feel there is a long way to go,” Roman Yelensky, the chief technology officer at Gritstone Oncology, told Business Insider. “And ultimately if in many cases it’s curing patients, we have to take the risk and then manage the benefits.”
Kelly Page, Takeda’s vice president of strategic planning in oncology, said this wasn’t all too different from the speed bumps the very first immunotherapies (namely the checkpoint inhibitors) experienced when they very first hit the field. “They were technologies before their time,” she said.
Researchers had a hard time monitoring how the immune system reacted with those therapies for a while before figuring out how to do it more securely.
“I think some of the other modalities, whether it be CAR-Ts or whatever, are going to go through that same thing,” Page said. “There’s this fight every time you bring in a fresh modality, but once you figure it out, it’s fantastic.”