Cell therapies constitute the largest number of agents in development in immuno-oncolog. In a recent review, American researchers provide an update on the pipeline and clinical trials of cancer cell therapies. They also compare the current landscape (with a March 2020 data cut-off point) with our previous update from March 2019). The current global cancer cell therapy pipeline includes 1,483 active agents, 472 more than last year. Among the different cell therapy types, the chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell class has the largest increase (290 agents this year versus 164 in 2019), whereas novel T cell approaches (such as CRISPR engineered T cells or γδT cells) and other cell therapies (such as macrophage-based therapies) have increased to 49 and 56 agents, respectively. To improve our understanding of the year-on-year developments, the active agents were reclassified based on their origin as autologous or allogeneic (off-the-shelf). A majority of cellular immunotherapies (667) in development are autologous in nature. However, the greatest percentage increase from those reported last year comes from preclinical (73.8% increase) and phase I (90.9% increase) development of allogeneic therapies. For most therapies in phase II and beyond that are being developed in countries other than the United States, it has not been disclosed whether they are autologous or allogeneic. Of note, the previously marketed allogeneic agent nalotimagene carmaleucel was withdrawn from the EU markets by its manufacturer MolMed in October 2019 following its failure to improve disease-free survival in a phase III trial. The review appeared in May 26th online issue of Nat Rev Drug Discov (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41573-020-00099-9)
