Novartis Kymriah has an advantage.

Abstracts Unveiled Ahead of ASCO, One Study Pits Novartis and Gilead CAR-T Therapies Head-to-Head
Published: May 17, 2018 By Alex Keown



Wednesday was the big day for pharma and biotech companies to unveil abstracts ahead of the annual American Society of Oncology meeting in Chicago next month. Some companies have unveiled positive results that are making investors happy, while others… not so much. BioSpace looks at a handful of the abstract reports.

Novartis vs. Gilead – One abstract that may get a lot of attention is a Chinese study that has pitted the only two U.S. Food and Drug Administration CAR-T drugs against each other in a head-to-head trial. The Chinese group ran a parallel trial to compare the CD28 (Gilead’s Yescarta) and 4-1BB (Novartis’ Kymriah) CD19-positive relapsed/ remitting B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. The study included 19 patients in CD28 group and 28 patients in 4-1BB group. The abstract results seem to show that Novartis Kymriah has an advantage. The objective response rate of the 4-1BB group was 100 percent. The ORR of CD28 group was 89 percent. Kymriah also appears to be safer, according to the abstract data. Nearly all the patients in the groups, 45 of 47, experienced some degree of cytokine release syndrome, a common occurrence with CAR-T treatment. Of those 45 patients, 5 patients who had grade III-IV of CRS were all in the group who received Gilead’s Yescarta. All adverse events were effectively controlled within one month, the Chinese group said.