Key Points
• Conclusion/Relevance: “The above studies, as well as the report of our patient, delineate that even in patients with unmeasured CD19 expression, subsequent therapies targeting CD19 remain effective. Disease progression following treatment with the anti-CD19 monoclonal antibody Tafasitamab should not preclude patients from anti-CD19 CAR T-cell therapy. It would although be ideal to establish the persistence of CD19 expression prior to initiating subsequent CD19-targeted therapy. Larger scale studies among R/R DLBCL patients across anti-CD19 modalities are needed to guide sequencing of therapies following initial anti-CD19 therapy.”
• This article is a retrospective chart review out of the University of California Los Angeles involving a 59-year-old woman with R/R DLBCL treated with tafasitamab/lenalidomide (TAFA/LEN) and anti-CD19 CAR T-cell therapy.
• The patient was administered TAFA/LEN 5 months before CAR T-cell therapy. Due to half-life, TAFA/LEN was likely cleared before anti-CD19 therapy. Because the patient experienced sustained remission for almost one year after receiving anti-CD19 CAR T-cell therapy, the investigators hypothesized that CD19 antigen escape did not explain the relapse—although no biopsy was done with progression after TAFA.