Impact of the kinetics of circulating anti-CD19 CAR-T cells and their populations on the outcome of DLBCL patients
Lourdes Martín‐Martín, Sara Gutiérrez-Herrero, María Herrero, Alejandro Martı́n, Ana Yeguas, Ana-África Martín-López, Lucía López‐Corral, Estefanía Pérez‐López, Marta García‐Blázquez, Fermín Sánchez‐Guijo, María‐Belén Vídriales, Giuseppe Gaipa, Alberto Órfão, María Belén Vidriales, Alberto Orfao
Abstract
CAR-T cell therapy has led to a significant advance in the treatment of refractory/relapsed diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) [ 1 ]. However, only less than half of all CAR-T-treated DLBCL patients achieve long-term disease control [ 2 , 3 , 4 ]. Among other parameters, the efficacy of CAR-T therapy in DLBCL has been associated with the patients’ immune system, the composition of the CAR-T product [ 5 ], the magnitude of the in vivo expansion and persistence of CAR-T cells [ 6 ]. Here, we used next-generation flow cytometry to investigate the kinetics of circulating anti-CD19 CAR-T cells and their populations in blood, and to determine their potential utility for predicting response to therapy. For this purpose, we studied 58 relapsed/refractory DLBCL patients (36 men and 22 women; median [range] age, 62 [32–79] years) treated with anti-CD19 axicabtagene ciloleucel (axi-cel, Kite, Gilead, Santa Monica, CA) or tisagenlecleucel (tisa-cel, Novartis, Bâle, Switzerland) CAR-T cells (Tables S1 , S2 ; Supplementary Data 1 ).