LONDON – “I really believe we can start using the word cure,” said the pioneer of chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR T) therapy Carl June, as he revealed two leukemia patients he treated in a phase I trial have now been in remission for 10 years. Both patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia achieved complete remission shortly after treatment in 2010. The genetic modification has remained detectable in their CAR T cells for more than 10 years of follow-up, June said, describing details of the case studies published in Nature Feb. 2.
Since COVID-19 hit the U.S. in 2020, the pandemic has taken more than 800,000 American lives. In that same time, cancer has claimed 1.2 million lives, President Joe Biden said Feb. 2 as he “reignited” the cancer moonshot he first launched in 2016 when he was serving as vice president.
Last week, Incyte Corp. said it was pulling its NDA seeking accelerated approval for the PI3K-delta inhibitor parsaclisib in three non-Hodgkin lymphoma subtypes, a move that followed recent decisions by Gilead Sciences Inc. and Secura Bio Inc. to withdraw from U.S. commercialization their respective PI3K-delta inhibitors in indications for which they’d received accelerated approval. But the recent spate of headlines is hardly “a condemnation” on the entire class of drugs, said Dan Gold, CEO of MEI Pharma Inc., which is aiming for a potential accelerated approval filing of its own PI3K-delta drug, zandelisib, this year.
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