Experts Review Practice-Informing Data From the 2026 Transplantation and Cellular Therapy Meetings

The 2026 Transplantation and Cellular Therapy Meetings (TCT) provided a vast array of insights into the evolving worlds of CAR T-cell therapy, graft-vs-host disease (GVHD) prophylaxis, novel drug development, and more. During the meeting, OncLive® collected expert commentary about the updates that are expected to play increasingly larger roles in drug research and patient treatment.

What long-term CAR T-cell therapy data help confirm the efficacy of standards of care (SOCs)?

“There are a few big takeaways [about] themes that have been focused on,” Peter Riedell, MD, of UChicago Medicine in Illinois, noted. “One of them is some of the nice longer-term follow-up data we’ve been seeing from some of the CAR T-cell treatments. We [saw a] presentation of the 3-year follow-up [data] from the phase 2 TRANSCEND FL study [NCT04245839] investigating lisocabtagene maraleucel [liso-cel; Breyanzi] in follicular lymphoma. Additionally, we [saw] the phase 2 ELARA trial [NCT03568461] of tisagenlecleucel [Kymriah] in patients with relapsed/refractory follicular lymphoma] that had 5-year updates.”

Further viewing: At the meeting, OncLive interviewed Riedell to gain more insights on the implications of the long-term efficacy data from ELARA.¹

How might novel CAR T-cell therapies improve treatment paradigms for hematologic malignancies and beyond?

“One of the [themes I was] also excited about from this congress was some of the data [with] next-generation CAR T-cell treatments,” Riedell added. “Those therapies are targeting more than 1 antigen. We have commercial SOC CAR T-cell therapies that are targeting CD19, but in the pipeline we have several agents that are targeting CD19 along with CD20. Getting some understanding about the activity of these agents and how they can be potentially incorporated into upcoming clinical trials, was another big theme of this meeting.”

“I was interested to see the preliminary data from some of the phase 2 dual CAR studies in lymphoma,” Nathan Denlinger, DO, of The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center—James in Columbus, said. “That has the opportunity to be a big game changer, maybe not in the near future, but in the next 7 to 8 years. There are some randomized, controlled studies investigating novel CAR T-cell products for novel indications, and those may disrupt the market for positive or negative. I hope we are developing CAR T-cell products that are safer and more efficacious than the ones that we used previously, and I hope those findings translate into [treatments] we can use for patients.”

“[Also] interesting [were data with] CAR T-cell therapies and the evolution of cellular therapy, [which is] changing the reality of diseases [for which] we don’t have other options of treatment,” Fernando Duarte, MD, PhD, of the Federal University of Ceará in Fortaleza, Brazil, spotlighted. “[These advances are] important to know [for] hematologic diseases, but also for solid organ diseases.”

“We saw a lot of encouraging studies,” Amrita Desai, MD, MPH, of Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, explained. “There were a lot of studies investigating CAR T-cell therapy in nonmalignant conditions, and the [CAR T-cell therapy] data in systemic lupus erythematosus were encouraging. The whole landscape of CAR T-cell therapy in autoimmune diseases is something to look forward to as we learn more about CAR T-cell therapy in nonmalignant settings.”

Further reading: OncLive reported on findings from a phase 1 trial (NCT05507827) investigating Orca-T plus allogeneic CAR T-cell therapy targeting both CD19 and CD22 in patients with high-risk B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia.² Additionally, we interviewed Denlinger to gather commentary on the real-world second-line use of liso-cel and axicabtagene ciloleucel (Yescarta) among patients with relapsed/refractory large B-cell lymphoma.³

How might CAR T-cell therapy development become increasingly specialized?

“There’s been a lot of interesting science,” Alfonso Molina, MD, MPH, of Stanford Health Care in Palo Alto, California, reported. “A lot of great abstracts were presented. One that stood out to me was in a CAR T-cell therapy persistence session by Evan Weber, PhD, of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania. He showed interesting data regarding FOXO1. He showed that if you knock that down, it can result in enhanced persistence of the CAR T cells, and it can be knocked down in vivo as well. He presented [those] interesting data for engineering CARs that may affect the way that we design CARs moving forward.”

What treatment advances are on the horizon for GVHD prophylaxis?

“TCT is interesting because we saw good news in the science that could change our reality,” Duarte explained. “I think that about immunology to prevent GVHD. [There was a] presentation from Pavan Reddy, MD, [of the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas], about aspects related to haploidentical transplantation, the relationship with the microbiome, and the oxidative stress related with the results of haploidentical transplantation.”

Further reading: For more GVHD research updates, check out OncLive’s coverage of a phase 2 trial (NCT04198922) exploring acalabrutinib (Calquence) in patients with steroid-refractory chronic GVHD, as well as phase 2 trial (NCT04572815) data with ustekinumab (Stelara) plus standard prophylaxis in patients with acute GVHD following hematopoietic cell transplant from matched unrelated donors.^4,5

References

1. Riedell P. Dr Riedell on the long-term efficacy of tisa-cel in R/R follicular lymphoma. February 6, 2026. Accessed February 11, 2026. https://www.onclive.com/view/dr-riedell-on-the-long-term-efficacy-of-tisa-cel-in-r-r-follicular-lymphoma
2. Wahner A. Orca-T with allogeneic CAR T-cell therapy is safe and effective in high-risk B-ALL. February 6, 2026. Accessed February 11, 2026. https://www.onclive.com/view/orca-t-with-allogeneic-car-t-cell-therapy-is-safe-and-effective-in-high-risk-b-all
3. Denlinger N. Dr Denlinger on the real-world use of axi-cel and liso-cel in R/R LBCL. February 7, 2026. Accessed February 11, 2026. https://www.onclive.com/view/dr-denlinger-on-the-real-world-use-of-axi-cel-and-liso-cel-in-r-r-lbcl
4. Wahner A. Acalabrutinib delivers strong responses with manageable toxicities in steroid-refractory cGVHD. February 5, 2026. Accessed February 11, 2026. https://www.onclive.com/view/acalabrutinib-delivers-strong-responses-with-manageable-toxicities-in-steroid-refractory-cgvhd
5. Feldman J. Ustekinumab plus standard prophylaxis reduces GVHD in MAC subgroup. February 5, 2026. Accessed February 11, 2026. https://www.onclive.com/view/ustekinumab-plus-standard-prophylaxis-reduces-gvhd-in-mac-subgroup