Early stage data in non-Hodgkins lymphoma trial prompts surge in Kite Pharma's shares

California-headquartered oncology biopharma specialist Kite Pharma (Nasdaq: KITE) has seen its share price soar as much as 49.5% on the back of positive early-stage tests showing the potential to treat aggressive non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma with an anti-CD19 chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy.

In the trial patients received a conditioning regimen of chemotherapy followed by one infusion of anti-CD19-CAR T-cells a day later, produced from the subject’s own peripheral blood mononuclear cells and modified using a gammaretroviral vector encoding the CAR and a CD28 costimulatory moiety. Of 13 patients that were evaluable, eight had complete remissions and four had partial remissions, which constituted an overall response rate of 92%. Of seven patients with chemotherapy-refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, four had complete remissions, three of which are ongoing with durations ranging from nine to 22 months.

Patients in the trial continue to be under monitoring to establish duration of response.