[CAR T-cell therapy and bispecific antibodies for relapsed/refractory follicular lymphoma].

Abstract

Follicular lymphoma (FL) is the second most common lymphoma subtype diagnosed in Japan. Although FL is not curable, it generally has an indolent clinical course in the absence of histologic transformation to aggressive B-cell lymphoma. However, subsets of patients, including those with progression of disease within 24 months (POD24) and those refractory to rituximab and/or alkylators, have a worse prognosis when treated with conventional cytotoxic chemotherapies. Currently, several novel immunotherapies including chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy and bispecific antibody (BsAb) therapy are under development for the treatment of B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphomas. Several randomized studies in relapsed/refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma have already demonstrated the superiority of novel immunotherapies over cytotoxic chemotherapy. Several single-arm pivotal studies of CAR T-cell therapies and BsAb therapies for relapsed/refractory FL have been conducted recently. Some of these agents have already been approved for the treatment of relapsed/refractory FL and are changing clinical practice dramatically. This manuscript summarizes available clinical data on CAR T-cell therapy and BsAb therapy for FL and briefly discusses future prospects.