So there's one type of immune therapy we haven't talked about which we get questions on all
the time at this conference, and that's what's going on potentially right now in several places
including City of Hope, and that's CAR T-cell therapy. So if you're in the world of leukemia
and lymphoma, a couple different types, it's changed the nature of that disease. It's a very
arguably—I don't know how you put it—it's a more specific type of immune therapy that's
had dramatic results in leukemia, types of leukemia and lymphoma, and now they've just
started the trials in prostate. Can you give us some background there and tell us what's going on?
Sure, actually I don't have a lot of inside knowledge on that, but I did have one patient who,
you know, Tanya Dorff at the City of Hope has been treating with that particular therapy.
It's a pretty kick-ass treatment. I mean you have to be in the hospital for a couple weeks because
the immune system is so intensely activated that the treatment can make people quite ill,
but this particular individual that is being monitored
followed also by my partner Dr. Turner had a very sharp decline in PSA after this treatment
and this individual did have advanced prostate cancer, had had a lot of previous treatments,
so my own in inside exposure to it is that not only on paper does it look hopeful,
but we've actually seen one of our patients that seems to be getting a nice response to it.
That is really interesting. I didn't know that because that's a phase I,
and so if there's they're experiencing anything in a phase I, that's got to be interesting.
Yeah, I think so. Well, you know, the design of this whole thing makes a whole lot of sense. So,
the reason — it's a very expensive treatment, but the reason people are willing to spend the money
is because, as you've pointed out, in other disease types it has been quite successful
and there's good reason to believe that it was that it will be successful in prostate cancer.
Wow, that's exciting. So remember for the audience it's called CAR-T. It's, I don't know,
I mean, if I have to give a quick summary of it ,it's highly—highly—specific immune therapy,
but it's just starting in clinical trial right down the street,
and I looked up on the government website and there's not many of these. I mean,
Tonya Dorff, Dr. Dorff, has got one of the first and only going on globally.
Yeah, it's like all, you know, it's a high risk high reward proposition, but it's — the design
makes sense and hopefully, it'll prove to be effective in a high percentage of people who
take it. If only, you know five or ten percent of the people respond, it may not be worth it because
it's such a gigantically expensive and potentially toxic treatment, but of course, if we're able
to really turn people around who are otherwise running out of options, that would be spectacular.
But we can't say necessarily right now if it's — I mean, did you see any responses
with Keytruda? So maybe these other types of immune therapies will be as good, we don't know,
but did you see anything that got you a couple patients here and there that got you very
excited about the immune therapies that you were giving and other people are giving in offices?
Yeah, I mean we published our results on Keytruda and we showed in the patients we selected which
were men that had you know hormone-resistant disease but their PSAs weren't very high
and generally speaking they didn't have did not have extensive metastasis, maybe a few metastases.
Over half of the patients with Keytruda had either stabilization of their rising
PSA or regression of their PSA, so it was not an inconsequential impact. We published that in the
clinical genito-urinary cancer about two months ago, so it's it's here to stay. I think that
it's going to be a part of the treatment armamentarium going forward.