I also at SIOG this year presented on CAR T and the concern for CAR T-related cognitive impairment. Cancer-related cognitive impairment is a major risk factor for patients that have cancer. Cancer-related cognitive impairment is very prevalent and we know that patients suffer with cancer-related cognitive impairment, either subjectively or objectively, it’s highly reported. In light of the new modality that’s available for many patients including older adults, CAR T therapy, is associated with a significant risk factor and a neurotoxicity called ICANS.

One of the points of my presentation was that cognitive screening is not routinely performed for patients that are undergoing CAR T therapy. So we really don’t know the impact of CAR T on cognitive deficit over a period of time. Many patients that come into CAR T are heavily pretreated and so my presentation focussed on ways to be able to screen patients for cognitive impairment and be able to track cognitive impairment over time. Also talking about novel methods to be able to attenuate cancer-related cognitive impairment and also ways to be able to consider introducing those methodologies into patients that are receiving CAR T, specifically older adults.