Article
作者: Shen, Yinan ; Humphries, Michael ; Yang, Ye ; Chen, Cao ; Xue, Xing ; Xu, Xingyuan ; Huang, Jiaqi ; Zhang, Yize ; Tu, Eric ; Wang, Fuzhe ; Wang, Hongkan ; Zou, Andy ; Fu, Qihan ; Bai, Xueli ; Cao, Daisy ; Hao, Yixin ; Zhang, Qi ; Sun, Lingyan ; Stone, John ; Liang, Tingbo ; Wu, Jiangchao ; Farsaci, Benedetto ; Cobbold, Mark ; Chu, Nina ; Giardino Torchia, Maria Letizia ; Sun, Ke ; Jian, Qijie ; Yao, Yihong ; Moody, Gordon ; Hong, Yi ; Cao, Wanyue ; Durham, Nick ; Jin, Gaowei ; Bondanza, Attilio ; Wang, Fei
Glypican-3 (GPC3) is highly expressed in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), making it an attractive target for chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy; however, this approach has previously shown limited clinical efficacy, potentially owing to high levels of transforming growth factor-β (TGFβ) in the tumour microenvironment1-4. We therefore engineered CAR T cells with a dominant-negative TGFβ receptor II, which showed enhanced antitumour activity in preclinical studies5. Here we report findings from a first-in-human trial evaluating the safety and efficacy of C-CAR031 in patients with advanced, treatment-refractory HCC ( NCT05155189 ). Thirty-six patients received CAR T infusions at four dose levels (from 0.75 × 106 to 4.0 × 106 cells per kg). Cytokine release syndrome was reported in 34 patients, of which two cases were grade 3. Nine patients had non-haematological adverse events of grade 3 or higher. Tumour regression was observed in 32 patients, with a median best tumour reduction from baseline of 41.6% (range: 3.4-94.4%) in target lesions. The objective response rate was 44.4%, and the median duration of response was 4.4 months (95% confidence interval: 2.9-7.4). Median progression-free survival and overall survival were 4.2 months (95% confidence interval: 2.9-4.8) and 14.2 months (95% confidence interval: 10.1 to not evaluable), respectively. High-throughput analyses of tumour samples and functional validation suggested that GPC3 antigen loss and increased TGFβ levels may contribute to C-CAR031 resistance. Collectively, these results indicate that C-CAR031 has a manageable safety profile and encouraging antitumour activity in heavily pretreated patients with advanced HCC.