With nearly 5,000 abstracts on tap for this December's American Society of Hematology (ASH) meeting in Orlando, Fla., organizers of the annual conference have highlighted a multitude of new advances in the event's programming.

SHANGHAI – Although China still has a way to go to approve any CAR T therapy, clinical development is robust with various targets being studied, and the regulatory environment is improving, cell therapy experts said at the Chinatrials 12 Summit.

There are a pair of approved CAR T drugs, Yescarta (axicabtagene ciloleucel) from Gilead Sciences Inc. and Kymriah (tisagenlecleucel) from Novartis AG, that have been available since 2017 for a few hematological cancers including some lymphomas and leukemias. But little is known about how these engineered chimeric antigen receptor T cells that both target CD19, an antigen prevalent in the cells of many B-cell malignancies, move through the body and proliferate after they are first removed, altered, expanded in number and, finally, returned to a patient's body.

PERTH, Australia – Melbourne-based Cartherics Pty Ltd. plans on taking its pluripotent stem cell technology into the clinic next year. It is employing advanced gene editing techniques for the next generation of CAR T therapy.

MELBOURNE, Australia – Although Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) approved its first CAR T therapy in 2018, the country is lacking a system to reimburse those advanced therapies, and industry is calling on government to revalue gene therapies so that patients can access them.