Lakshmi Nayak, MD, Director of the Center for Central Nervous System (CNS) Lymphoma at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, spoke with Blood Cancers Today about her presentation at the 2024 ASCO® Annual Meeting.
“[Our study] is a pilot study of axicabtagene ciloleucel (axi-cel) in relapsed and refractory primary and secondary CNS lymphomas,” Dr. Nayak said. “The treatment of CNS lymphomas is really an unmet need…these patients respond very well to initial induction chemotherapy; however, the relapse and recurrence rates are very high and a group of patients are also refractory to initial induction chemotherapy.”
Dr. Nayak’s study enrolled 18 patients, of which 13 had primary CNS lymphoma and five had secondary CNS lymphoma. She stated that axi-cel was “very safe and well tolerated in these patients.”
Notably, patients with CNS lymphomas were excluded from the initial studies on axi-cel due to safety concerns, “particularly a high risk of neurotoxicity,” according to Dr. Nayak.
“In our study we actually did not find a higher risk of neurotoxicity in brain tumor patients and the risk of [immune effector cell-associated neurotoxicity syndrome (ICANS)] was similar to that seen in patients with systemic diffuse large B-cell lymphoma,” Dr. Nayak said.
The median progression-free survival (PFS) was 14 months and the median durability of response was 13 months. Additionally, more than 50% of the participants had a PFS of 12 months.
“This is a very promising therapy in our patient population where relapses are common and survival after relapse is quite poor, and we’re very excited about these results,” Dr. Nayak closed.