Northside Hospital Cancer Institute (NHCI) Immunotherapy Program in Georgia offers a new chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, BREYANZI™.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved BREYANZI™ (lisocabtagene maraleucel; liso-cel), from Bristol Myers, a CD19-directed genetically modified autologous T-cell immunotherapy, for the treatment of adult patients with:

• Relapsed or refractory (R/R) large B-cell lymphoma after two or more lines of systemic therapy.
• Including diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) not otherwise specified (including DLBCL arising from indolent lymphoma).
• High-grade B-cell lymphoma, primary mediastinal large B-cell lymphoma, and follicular lymphoma grade 3B.

“The approval of this BREYANZI offers another highly effective CAR-T option for patients with relapsed/refractory large B cell lymphoma,” said Dr. Scott Solomon, medical director of Northside’s Blood and Marrow Transplant (BMT) Matched Unrelated Donor Program and Stem Cell Processing Laboratory. “A major difference between BREYANZI and other currently available CAR-T products involves the separation of the patient’s CD4 and CD8 T cells prior to manufacturing and then administration of each cell type back to the patient in equal target doses; this produces a consistent product for each patient.”

DLBCL is a fast-growing, aggressive disease. According to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, it is the most common non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, with more than 25,000 cases diagnosed each year. CAR T-cell therapy is one of several types of immunotherapy used to treat the disease.

“Although CD19-targeted CAR T cell therapies have emerged as highly effective, potentially curative therapies, they do carry significant risks, including cytokine release syndrome (CRS) and neurologic toxicities,” said Dr. Solomon. “BREYANZI was designed to try to maximize both efficacy and safety; the TRANSCEND study, which led to its recent FDA approval, showed relatively low rates of severe CRS and neurological toxicity as well as the feasibility of outpatient administration, which is meaningful for patients, physicians and the  health care system.”

“I think the favorable balance of efficacy and safety may make BREYANZI the CAR T-cell therapy of choice in patients with relapsed/refractory large B-cell lymphomas,” Dr. Solomon added.