Dr. Jacobson on the Interim Analysis of the MZL Cohort in the ZUMA-5 Trial

Caron Jacobson, MD, a senior physician and medical director of the Immune Effector Cell Therapy Program at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, discusses the interim analysis results of the marginal zone lymphoma (MZL) cohort in the phase 2 ZUMA-5 study with axicabtagene ciloleucel (axi-cel; Yescarta) in relapsed/refractory indolent non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

The MZL cohort included in the efficacy analysis was smaller than the follicular lymphoma cohort, with just 16 patients, says Jacobson. Patients were required to have 1 month of follow-up in order to have at least 1 scan to review for efficacy. The primary end point was response rate by independent radiology review. When the central radiology review examined the pretreatment scans, they found that some of these patients did not meet measurable disease criteria, says Jacobson.

The overall response rate was closer to 81%, with a complete response rate of 75%, adds Jacobson. Moreover, 19% of patients were non-evaluable because they were not felt to have measurable disease prior to receiving CAR T-cell therapy, explains Jacobson.

The data in the MZL cohort looks less favorable than those reported in the follicular lymphoma cohort, mostly because of the fact that 19% of patients were not determined to be evaluable. No patients experienced disease progression in that cohort.

Notably, the follow-up time is very short, says Jacobson. Most patients had a 6-month follow-up, so the duration of response curves were truncated early. The data are immature in terms of durability of response in the MZL cohort, concludes Jacobson.