Cancer: Breakthrough NZ-developed therapy shows promising results for killer disease

A groundbreaking Kiwi-developed therapy has been shown to be safer than its leading overseas counterparts at treating certain types of blood cancer, while staying effective.

Promising results revealed today mark the latest milestone in a six-year push toward a new generation of CAR T-cell therapy - in which a patient’s own immune or T-cells are genetically modified to recognise and destroy their cancer.

Dubbed Enable - and arising from a joint venture between Wellington’s Malaghan Institute and China’s Hunan Zhaotai Medical Group - the effort aimed to develop a CAR-T cell treatment as effective and safer than existing ones.

In phase one clinical trials, CAR T-cells created and manufactured in Wellington have been used in 21 patients with specific types of lymphoma, and who’d exhausted their options for treatment.

The results, published online today, showed around half of the participants’ lymphomas to be in complete response three months after receiving the therapy.

Importantly, none had developed neurotoxicity or severe cytokine release syndrome - common side effects of some commercial CAR T-cell therapies.

“These results suggest our new CAR T-cell therapy may reduce risk of severe side effects, while remaining effective,” Malaghan Institute clinical director Dr Rob Weinkove said.

“We are preparing for a larger trial to confirm this.”

Source / Malaghan Institute

Now a standard therapy overseas for types of relapsed lymphoma, leukaemia and for myeloma, CAR T-cell therapy isn’t yet available as a funded treatment in New Zealand.

As it works in a very different way to conventional chemotherapies and radiotherapies, it could often prove much more successful for patients whose blood cancer hadn’t responded well to other treatments.

For Kiwi businessman David Downs - once given mere months to live after 12 rounds of chemotherapy failed to subdue his non-Hodgkin lymphoma - travelling to the US to receive CAR-T cell therapy proved a life-saving decision.

The Enable trial’s own treatment built on second-generation therapies used overseas, and added a new gene segment called TLR2, which has been shown to alter the effect of the CAR-T cells.

“This is a hugely ambitious clinical trial proving we can conduct cutting-edge trials that draw international attention,” Weinkove said.

“Even more importantly, it demonstrates that we can develop high-tech manufacturing here in New Zealand, and that there are no insurmountable obstacles to delivering new cancer treatments like CAR T-cell therapy in our hospitals.”

The new results come months after global pharma giant Dr Reddy’s secured an exclusive licence to trial and commercialise the treatment’s construct in India, as part of a multi-million-dollar deal.

Jamie Morton is a specialist in science and environmental reporting. He joined the Herald in 2011 and writes about everything from conservation and climate change to natural hazards and new technology.