Engineered Anti-MAGE-A T-Cells Show Early Promise
Source: OncLive, November 2018
Genetically engineered T-cells targeting a common tumor antigen appeared safe and demonstrated some evidence of antitumor activity in a first-in-human clinical evaluation.
The first 6 patients treated with either of 2 doses of engineered T-cells targeting melanoma-associated antigen-A4 (MAGE-A4) had a variety of adverse events (AEs), but treatment-related grade ?3 AEs occurred in a minority of the patients. Four of the 6 heavily pretreated patients had stable disease as best response, including 1 who had ongoing stable disease at 6 weeks, as reported in a poster presentation at the European Society for Medical Oncology Annual Congress in Munich, Germany.
“MAGE-A4 SPEAR (specific peptide enhanced affinity receptor) T-cells at the 0.1 x 109 and 1.0 x 109 transduced doses appear to show no evidence of alloreactivity or off-target toxicity,” Marcus Butler, MD, of Princess Margaret Cancer Center in Toronto, and colleagues concluded. “The most frequent adverse events and treatment-related adverse events are consistent with those typically experienced by cancer patients undergoing cytotoxic chemotherapy or other cancer immunotherapies.”