T-cell immunotherapy Doubles GvHD-Free Survival

Menlo Park, CA–based Orca Bio announced that its allogeneic T-cell immunotherapy Orca-T led to a significant improvement in survival without chronic graft-versus-host disease (cGvHD) compared with a conventional allogeneic stem cell transplant (SCT). Patients with hematologic malignancies who received Orca-T—which is composed of purified regulatory T cells, CD34+ stem cells, and conventional T cells derived from the peripheral blood of a related or unrelated matched donors—had a 1-year survival rate of 78% compared with 38% in the group that received a traditional SCT. Moderate to severe cGvHD was observed in 13% of patients receiving Orca-T and 44% of patients who received conventional treatment.