Anti-CD30 chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapy for relapsed/refractory CD30+ lymphoma patients

Since human lymphoma cells have a specific antigen expression pattern according to cell types and stages of differentiation, immunotherapy has become a promising field in lymphoma treatment. CD30 is a type 1 transmembrane receptor that is consistently overexpressed on all stages of cells in classical Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) and anaplastic large-cell lymphoma (ALCL); meanwhile, on normal cells, CD30 expression is limited, indicating that CD30 is an ideal immunotherapeutic target for these lymphoma subtypes 1 , 2 . CD30 antibody–drug conjugate brentuximab vedotin (BV) has been applied either as a single agent or combining it with frontline regimens. Encouraging results with a high response rate and good safety profile were reported in newly diagnosed patients; on the other hand, in refractory/relapse (r/r) patients, although the overall reaction rate of BV was still impressive, the CR rate seemed unsatisfactory 3 , 4 . The same situation was faced when anti-PD-1 antibody was used in r/r HL patients 5 , 6 . Therefore, there is still a challenge to treat r/r patients with these targeted therapy drugs. Recently, a new immunotherapy technique, named chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy, was developed 7 . CAR-T therapy targeting CD19 has been reported with exciting results in r/r B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL), and also demonstrated efficacy in r/r B cell non-Hodgkin lymphomas (B-NHL) 8 , 9 .