What should patients expect during and after treatment with CAR T-cell therapy?

I always tell my patients, this is a team effort. And we need, like, you know, the whole system around the patient is set up with effective caregiver support, both during and after hospital stay to make sure the patients need all the care they give, because the care after CAR-T doesn't stop in those 1 to 2 weeks, the first three months are crucial. With a lot of back and forth visits to the clinic. Some patients may expect some delayed toxicities and we need to catch them early intervene. There's a risk of infections. There's a risk of needing like, you know, blood transfusions or blood components after CAR-T. So there's a lot of close monitoring that goes to and it's a very invested process. And we want patients to succeed. And so having full care team both on the doctors end of things and also on the patient's end of things, is crucial to make this a success.

How is CAR T-cell therapy administered?

It's basically different institutions do it, differently. Again, as I said, there are multiple steps to the CAR-T process. So first you have to get the patient worked up, get the authorization to get the, T-cells collected from the patient. And that can take time. And then the T-cells are collected, shipped off to whichever facility in new Jersey or California that makes these cells currently. And then they come back to the center. And once the cells are back, the way this can be delivered, it's given intravenously. It's just like a transfusion. It is given. It can be given as an outpatient or on the inpatient setting. And after the patients get it, usually they stay in the hospital anywhere from a week to two weeks.

How has the effectiveness of CAR T-cell therapy monitored in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma patients?

With large cell lymphoma compared to other disease states, we are looking for a cure with this treatment, and how we monitor patients is usually with imaging and the most important modality for imaging is something that we call a PET imaging or PET-CT scans. So we have PET scans before the patient gets the T-cells. And then we start monitoring it a month, three months and every three months after for the first year, and then every six months for the second year. Patients who remain in what we call as a complete remission on the scan, having clean scans at the end of one and two years are those who are potentially cured.