Yescarta Shows Promise After Rival CAR-T Therapy Posts Positive Results

Yescarta, Gilead Sciences’ CAR-T cell therapy for large B-cell lymphoma, is performing well in its phase 3 trial, the company said.

Preliminary results of Gilead’s randomized trial, begun in 2017, showed that Yescarta (axicabtagene ciloleucel) was better than the standard of care at preventing the return of large B-cell lymphoma in patients whose previous treatment hadn’t worked. Standard of care for relapsing large B-cell lymphoma is chemotherapy and a stem-cell transplant.

In the interim analysis, Yescarta met the primary endpoint of event-free survival and the key secondary endpoint of objective response rate (the percentage of study subjects who had a response to the medicine), Gilead said, adding that further analyses are planned to confirm the interim findings.