ASH 2014
Comment: Blinatumomab for acute lymphocytic leukaemia
Dr Catherine Bollard - Texas Children's Hospital, Houston, USA
Now in acute lymphoblastic leukaemia we’ve been hearing about blinatumomab, a bi-specific T-cell engager, BiTE, what is that and were you impressed by the data that Nicola Gökbuget was telling us.
This is very impressive data. This is an off-the-shelf therapeutic that targets CD19, not only as an antibody to target CD19 but as a way to engage the CD3 positive T-cells to also kill the tumour cells. So it’s really trying to elicit an immune response in vivo. So after giving this agent you not only are directly targeting the CD19 cells but you are eliciting an immune response specific to those tumour cells.
She was talking about minimum residual disease, that’s clinically not present but molecularly present, do you think this therapy is actually getting rid of those molecules altogether and possibly creating a cure?
I think we don’t know but her data is compelling enough to think that ultimately that could be what will be the long-term goal, that you will offer a chance of cure in patients, to ultimately get it right the first time, prevent relapse. The next big question is can we combine it with conventional chemotherapy? Can we use it up front at diagnosis to prevent relapse?
