SAN DIEGO – When the first lupus patient received CAR-T therapy, researchers watched in amazement as her autoimmune disease rapidly regressed. Then they watched her illness anxiously for months, wondering whether it would return — especially as her immune B cells began to recover.
Now, two and a half years later, researchers reported at the annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology that not only is this patient still in complete remission without the use of immunosuppressants, but so are 14 other autoimmune patients treated with CAR-T . Doctors treated eight of these patients for lupus, four for systemic sclerosis and three for inflammatory myositis. Although these findings are still early, experts say the data invigorates an emerging field of autoimmune diseases.
“It looks very encouraging and stimulating [CAR-T] could be used in other diseases where we thought B cells might not be as important, such as scleroderma, which is not thought to be a disease caused by B lymphocytes or plasma cells,” said PJ Utz, a rheumatologist and immunologist at Stanford University who did not work on the study. However, he added, questions remain. “When you study a new entity like this, do you look at is it reproducible? Will it remain safe with a larger number of patients? And does this effectiveness persist over a longer period of time?”
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