How do bispecific differ from Car T-cell therapy in terms of effectiveness and side effects?

When we compare bispecifics and CAR-T cells, there are obviously similarities, which is the fact that T cells are here to kill the tumor cells.

In the CAR-T cell systems these are genetically modified cells that are manufactured ex vivo while with bispecific everything occurs in vivo. So one of the first differences is that bispecific antibody, as we call them, are off the shelf.

You can treat a patient tomorrow while with CAR-T cell. It's a long delay. This makes a comparison between the two pathway of treatment a little bit complicated, because these are not necessarily the same exact patients that received the two drugs or the two processes. But let's put it like that. I think the response rate, the number of patients that achieve a shrinkage of the tumor or the disappearance of the tumor with bispecific antibodies, is in the range of 50 to 60%, with a complete response rate about, the range of 40% in what I would call the third line setting. With CAR-T cells, the results were higher, probably in the range of 60 to 80%, with a complete response rate, usually above 50%.

And we know already that CAR-T cell, which have been developed earlier, provide a possibility for cure for diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. We don't know that yet for bispecific antibodies. We have now result up to three four years.

And we do understand that there were patients treated early in the trial that are free of disease.

But it's a little bit difficult at this time to clearly compare the long term efficacy. We do hope, still that bispecific offers a potential for curative, a curative potential for patient Dlbcl, but we are not yet there. So at this time, it's likely that CAR-T cell are slightly more effective, more constrained, more side effect. But we hope that bispecific enable us to cure more patients.