Dr. Garfall on CAR T Cells in ALL

Alfred L. Garfall, MD, MS, assistant professor of Medicine, the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, discusses chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy in acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).

Studies have now progressed to the point where there are enough patients treated to ascertain certain patterns of response and resistance across different malignancies, Garfall explains.

In ALL, there are 90% response rates with CAR T-cell therapy in patients who are refractory to all other therapies. However, a sizeable portion of those patients will relapse and, in most cases, those relapses will be selection for CD19-negative disease, where the leukemia has managed to eliminate the target of the CAR T cell.