Dr. Grupp Discusses the Findings of the ELIANA Trial

Stephan Grupp, MD, PhD, director, Cancer Immunotherapy Program, director, Translational Research for the Center for Childhood Cancer Research, medical director, Stem Cell Laboratory, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, discusses the findings of the ELIANA trial.

Updated findings from the phase II ELIANA study of tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah) in pediatric and young adult patients with relapsed or refractory acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) were presented at the 2018 ASH Annual Meeting. In this population, the CD19-targeted chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy demonstrated sustained rates of relapse-free survival (RFS) and overall survival (OS) at 24 and 18 months.

The 24-month RFS rate with tisagenlecleucel was 62% (95% CI, 47%-75%). At months 12 and 18, the RFS rate was 66% (95% CI, 52%-77%). Additionally, the 12-month OS rate was 76% (95% CI, 65%-85%) with tisagenlecleucel and the 18-month OS rate was 70% (95% CI, 58%-79%). These pediatric and young adult patients had a high disease burden with overtly relapsed ALL, Grupp notes. The updated results show that these patients are staying in remission for a significant amount of time following infusion of this CAR T-cell therapy.