NEJM: CAR-T cell therapy successfully treats lupus erythematosus for the first time

CAR-T cell therapy, stands Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-Cell Immunotherapy, refers to a chimeric T-cell antigen receptor immune therapy

Since the FDA approved Novartis’s CAR-T therapy Kymriah (CTL-019) on August 30, 2017 , the world has approved 5 CAR-T therapies for marketing, of which 4 target CD19 and 1 target BCMA

On August 5, 2021, researchers from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany published an article titled CD19-Targeted CAR T Cells in Refractory Systemic Lupus Erythematosus in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM)

The research team performed CAR-T cell therapy on a 20-year-old female patient with severe systemic lupus erythematosus.

The research team said that although it was only one patient, the test results showed that CAR-T therapy responded quickly, and the patient's symptoms subsided quickly.

For lupus patients, their enemy is not the tumor, but their own immune system.

An untreated 20-year-old female patient suffers from severe systemic lupus erythematosus.

In desperation, the treatment team decided to try CAR-T cell therapy.

The modified T cells were infused back into the patient.

Using current existing treatment methods, most systemic lupus erythematosus is difficult to maintain remission, let alone cure, but this study shows that CAR-T therapy is expected to completely cure lupus erythematosus, the "undead cancer"

The research team also pointed out that the infusion cost of CAR-T cell therapy exceeds $200,000, which does not include hospitalization costs

This study shows that CAR-T cell therapy targeting CD19 can induce rapid remission of refractory systemic lupus erythematosus

Original source:

Dimitrios Mougiakakos, et al.