Erina Hosoya and colleagues from Juntendo University performed a retrospective analysis of data from 41 patients who received B-cell lymphoma therapy with the CAR-T drug tisagenlecleucel for three years. It showed that 11 (27 percent) of the participants developed a serious side effect that had not been recorded in previous studies. This is laryngeal edema, which can lead to airway compression and acute oxygen starvation. It did not depend on the tumor location and was more often observed with an infusion of more than 3.4 × 108 CAR-T cells. Timely therapy with dexamethasone successfully stopped this complication without affecting the effectiveness of the therapy. Its mechanisms remain unknown. The publication about this appeared in the journal Haematologica.
The most common side effect was the well-known cytokine release syndrome, which developed in 30 patients (73 percent), 14 of whom (34 percent) had a severe form. There were no treatment-related deaths. Overall survival was 73.8 percent, including 49.6 percent without tumor progression.
