Hollings Horizons Winter 2025 - Flipbook - Page 8
LIFESAVING
THERAPY Z
BLOOD CANCER
PATIENTS
CAR-T cell therapy has been a lifesaver for some
blood cancer patients — but it’s an expensive
treatment with serious side effects.
Now, a clinical trial at Hollings testing CAR-T cells
with the addition of a patented cytokine “cocktail” is
showing strong results.
The trial is the result of a partnership between Brian
Hess, M.D., a hematologist oncologist, and Shikhar
Mehrotra, Ph.D., an immunologist.
As of late September, all four patients who’ve had
PET scans 30 days after treatment are in complete
remission. An additional two patients have upcoming
PET scans.
Furthermore, the trial has been able to treat patients
with multiple types of lymphoma, including marginal
zone lymphoma, which does not yet have an
FDA-approved CAR-T cell treatment.
CAR-T cell therapy is an approved treatment for
several types of lymphoma and multiple myeloma,
once standard treatments have all been tried. In this
treatment, a patient’s T-cells — part of the immune
system — are removed and then engineered in a lab to
add a CAR, a chimeric antigen receptor, which helps
the T-cell to home in on specific proteins expressed
on the surface of the cancer cells. The supercharged
CAR-T cells are then returned to the patient.
Brian Hess, M.D., talks with Ted Kopacko.
The treatment can be extremely effective against
cancer — but it also can produce serious side
effects, including cytokine release syndrome and
neurotoxicity that can require hospitalization and
close monitoring.
Hess has treated numerous patients with conventional
CAR-T. He’s seen some patients have great results,
but he’s not satisfied that the treatment is as good as
it could be. Neither is Mehrotra, who specializes in
targeting T-cell signaling.
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HOLLINGS HORIZONS Winter 2025
