Media Contact:
Alix Friedman
Afriedman@hadassah.org
NEW YORK, NY — Close to 90 percent of patients who received a new immunotherapy treatment for multiple myeloma developed by Israel’s Hadassah Medical Organization have seen improvement while more than half — 57 percent — have gone into remission. Clinical trials of the therapy, known as CAR-T, or chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy, will begin soon in the United States.
“These are dramatic results and offer enormous hope for patients who have a disease that, to date, has been incurable,” said Polina Stepensky, MD, a hematologist-oncologist, pediatrician and stem-cell transplantation expert who directs Hadassah’s Bone Marrow Transplantation Department.
The CAR-T treatment was developed at Hadassah by Dr. Stepensky and her team at Hadassah in collaboration with immunologist Cyrille J. Cohen, PhD, and his group at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel, where he heads the Tumor Immunology and Immunotherapy Laboratory.
The Los Angeles-based biopharmaceutical company Immix BioPharma has bought the patent rights to the treatment and expects to start clinical trials in the US soon. The company hopes to have FDA approval within a year.
The second-most common blood cancer, multiple myeloma has resisted treatment. Until a few years ago, patients with the disease, which accounts for one percent of all cancers and 10 percent of blood cancers, had an average life expectancy of only two years.Incidence of the illness has been growing, with 176,000 people expected to be diagnosed worldwide in 2023, including 35,730 in the US.
Using a Patient’s Own Cells to Destroy Tumors
CAR-T enlists a patient’s healthy cells to destroy the cancerous ones. A patient’s T-cells – the immune system’s active cells, which can fight tumors – are isolated using an apheresis machine, which separates the patient’s blood into red and white cells. Genetic engineering is used to add a virus and a genetic segment that encodes a receptor against the cancer cells. A large quantity of the engineered cells are then injected back into the patient, where they hunt down and destroy the multiple myeloma cells.
The groundbreaking idea of using a patient’s own immune system cells to fight cancerous ones was first proposed several decades ago by Zelig Eshhar, PhD, at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science. Since then, Dr. Stepensky has led the development and promotion of CAR-T.
Previously Exorbitant Treatment Now Affordable
By producing CAR-T at Hadassah, Dr. Stepensky has been able to make the previously exorbitant treatment accessible. The medical center built a special laboratory as well as master cell banks and manufacturing facilities adhering to globally recognized production guidelines.
“Until now, this treatment has only been available in China and the United States at a cost of nearly $400,000 per patient treatment,” said Dr. Stepensky. “Only 20 percent of those who need to receive it in those countries actually get it.”
As the first and only institution in Israel to develop, manufacture and deliver treatment of CAR-T, Hadassah is the leader in a field that will eventually yield CAR-T treatments for other types of cancers.
ABOUT THE HADASSAH MEDICAL ORGANIZATION:
For more than a century, the Hadassah Medical Organization has set the standard for excellence in medical care and research in Israel. The experience and ingenuity of Hadassah’s doctors and scientists have yielded ideas with vast potential in all areas of medicine, including therapeutics, diagnostic medical devices and digital health. In 2023, Newsweek named Hadassah a world leader in oncology, the only medical center in Israel to receive that honor, and one of the world’s top hospitals in cardiology and smart technology.