Creating a “Watershed Moment” for Novel Therapeutic Access in Lymphoma

An ongoing phase 1 trial could create a “watershed moment” for providing safe CAR T-cell therapy in a setting closer to home among patients with lymphoma, according to Suman Kambhampati, MD.

In a discussion ahead of the 2025 ICE-T (Immune Cell Effector Therapy) Congress, Kambhampati spoke with CancerNetwork® about ongoing research that aims to mitigate barriers to treatment access among patients with lymphoma and other hematologic cancers, especially those who reside in rural communities. He highlighted this initiative in the context of a panel discussion he would attend at the meeting titled “Access with CAR-T and Bispecifics.”

The phase 1 trial, Kambhampati described, is designed to offer a novel allogenic CAR T-cell product to patients with relapsed/refractory lymphoma without requiring them to travel all the way to a tertiary care center. If the trial yields success, he stated that the study’s principles may also be applicable to the use of bispecific antibodies. Overall, Kambhampati explained that this collaboration with different community and rural practices may be “terrific” for expanding access to treatment for patients.

Kambhampati is an associate professor of Medicine and director of KU-VA Integration and Infrastructure Development in the Division of Hematologic Malignancies and Cellular Therapeutics of the Department of Internal Medicine at The University of Kansas Cancer Center.

Transcript:

As a tertiary care facility and an NCI-funded comprehensive cancer center, one of the big asks for us is to decrease the disparity between rural and urban patients. We take that seriously, and the Department of Hematology and Cell Therapy is now leading a national trial offering allogeneic CAR T cells for [patients with] relapsed and refractory lymphoma. This study is being led by Joseph P. McGuirk, DO, the chair of our program. We are collaborating with many community and rural practices to offer a novel allogeneic CAR T-cell product for [patients with] relapsed/refractory lymphoma close to home. They do not need to come all the way to Kansas City; these patients will be treated and managed close to home.

That could be the watershed moment, about designing these types of safe treatments that could be done or delivered close to home. If successful, I would argue the same principles could apply to bispecific drugs wherein these patients could be [treated] in a hybrid fashion. For the early phase of treatment, [they] come to a tertiary care facility and then immediately [get] sent back to community practices once they are on a safe and maintenance phase of their treatment. These new treatments are changing rapidly, and I would bet that in the next 3 to 5 years, the adoption rates for these new treatments would increase significantly. We would then be tasked to make sure that these patients have recurring access to these new drugs. This collaboration would be terrific in expanding these sorts of drugs to other tertiary care [facilities] and rural collaborations.

Reference

Birch K. “Triple Threat” CAR T-cell therapy clinical trial debuts at KU Cancer Center. News release. KU Medical Center. August 5, 2025. Accessed October 1, 2025. https://tinyurl.com/2eb2r2xp