Health security

Novartis says 82 percent of leukemia patients in remission after CAR-T

An experimental cancer therapy being developed by Novartis AG eliminated an aggressive form of blood cancer in 82 percent of children and young adults treated with modified immune cells in a mid-stage trial, the company said on Saturday.

Interim results from the multi-center trial for 50 patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia whose cancer returned or did not respond to other treatment, showed that 41 were disease-free three months after treatment with the drug, called CTL019.

The trial results were presented at a meeting of the American Society of Hematology in San Diego.

Novartis estimated that 60 percent of those responders were relapse-free after six months. Complete remission was defined as including "remission with incomplete blood count recovery."