CAR-T State of the Art and Future Challenges, A Regulatory Perspective

This review is an outlook on CAR-T development up to the beginning of 2023, with a special focus on the European landscape and its regulatory field, highlighting the main features and limitations affecting this innovative therapy in cancer treatment. We analysed the current state of the art in the EU and set out a showcase of the field’s potential advancements in the coming years. For this analysis, the data used came from the available scientific literature as well as from the European Medicines Agency and from clinical trial databases. The latter were investigated to query the studies on CAR-Ts that are active and/or relevant to the review process. As of this writing, CAR-Ts have started to move past the “ceiling” of third-line treatment with positive results in comparison trials with the Standard of Care (SoC). One such example is the trial Zuma-7 (NCT03391466), which resulted in approval of CAR-T products (Yescarta™) for second-line treatment, a crucial achievement for the field which can increase the use of this type of therapy. Despite exciting results in clinical trials, limitations are still many: they regard access, production, duration of response, resistance, safety, overall efficacy, and cost mitigation strategies. Nonetheless, CAR-T constructs are becoming more diverse, and the technology is starting to produce some remarkable results in treating diseases other than cancer.