ESMO Immuno-Oncology 2025 | Emerging CAR-T and bispecific antibody strategies in solid tumors

I think as we speak now, I think the most convincing data I have seen in recent times has been with CAR-T cells. And on the one hand, especially in the context of engineering in CAR-T cells, I think these data have been quite exciting. Although the call for caution is, of course, that these are still early-phase trials with a low number of patients. Essentially, really one center or very few centers are doing these studies. And so essentially, they call for larger validation and also confirmation, maybe also across centers or across entities. But clearly, that’s a very exciting and very promising field to me and I think to many others as well. And I think we may be also able to figure similar things with proteins, so meaning with bispecific or other approaches that are targeting in CAR-T cells and maybe going into consideration. And again, so there’s been some, well, a bit encouraging phase one clinical trials. I think one of those that were mentioned is the CD16, CD30 bispecific antibody, which is recruiting in CAR-T cells to a certain type of lymphoma and CD30-positive that shows total promise. But again, so it’s a phase one trial in refractory patients. So again, it should be taken with caution. And again, so I think the C47 data is also quite encouraging, although it also shows that applying a new concept into patients is not a self-runner. So probably, and that’s to me, it’s also one of the big topics in immuno-oncology these days is that actually we need to get off this one-fits-all approach type that we have been all practicing, especially also pharma loves to practice because it’s more attractive and that’s complicated. But the truth is, I think we’ve lost a lot of great concepts along the way just because we were not patient enough to narrow it down to the actual patients that are to benefit from it. And I think going forward with the resources that are more and more limited in the field, I think this will become, or if it’s not already, to me, it’s already a big, big question that needs to be solved is how do we refine all these approaches to the ones that are most likely to benefit from? And I think this is something that, to me, will need to be incorporated in the preclinical work and the trial design in the future so that we won’t be wasting resources or at least fewer resources on concepts that are simply not promising because they’re just hitting the wrong patients.

This transcript is AI-generated. While we strive for accuracy, please verify this copy with the video.