Evidence of CAR T-cell therapy against cancers presented at US conference

Studies have provided evidence of the effectiveness of CAR T-cell therapy against gastric and brain tumours.

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The papers, presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology [ASCO] 2025, held from May 30 to June 3 in Chicago, US, have also been published in journals, including The Lancet and Nature Medicine.

Treating cancer using CAR T-cell therapy involves modifying genes in one’s T-cells – a type of immune cell – to help fight cancer.

In The Lancet paper that revealed results of phase 2 clinical trials, 156 patients with advanced gastric or gastro-oesophageal junction cancer – and who were resistant to “at least two previous lines of treatment” – were randomly assigned to receive ‘satri-cel’ or an intervention of physician’s choice.

Satri-cel, or ‘Satricabtagene autoleucel’ – a CAR T-cell therapy—showed “encouraging activity” in phase 1 clinical trials in treating patients with advanced gastric or gastro-oesophageal junction cancer, the team, including researchers from China’s Peking University Cancer Hospital and Institute, said.

A phase-1 trial primarily looks at establishing a new drug’s safety and dose characteristics in about 20-100 healthy volunteers, while a phase-2 trial provides evidence of the effectiveness of the experimental drug in about 100-300 volunteers or participants.

“In this multicentre, randomised, phase 2 study, satri-cel was associated with a statistically significant increase in progression-free survival and clinically meaningful increase in overall survival compared with TPC (treatment of physician’s choice), along with a manageable safety profile in patients,” the authors wrote.

They added that it is the “first randomised controlled study of a CAR T-cell therapy in solid tumours”.

In the second study, published in the Nature Medicine journal, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, US, said that CAR T-cell therapy “shows promise for slowing tumour growth in a notoriously aggressive and fast-growing brain cancer.”

The phase-1 trial involved 18 patients with glioblastoma who received the treatment.

“Tumour regression (becoming smaller) occurred in eight of 13 patients (62 per cent) with measurable disease,” the authors wrote.

In March, a CAR T-cell therapy, indigenously developed by researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay and Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai, showed a 73 per cent response rate in patients of leukaemia and lymphoma, who either relapsed following a period of remission or were resistant to treatment.

The results of the phase 1 and 2 clinical trials have been published in The Lancet Haematology journal.