NEUROTOXICITY RELATED TO CAR T-CELL THERAPY IN PATIENTS WITH SECONDARY CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM LYMPHOMA

Abstract INTRODUCTION Patients with secondary CNS lymphoma (SCNSL) were excluded from the pivotal trials that led to the approval of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy for relapsed/refractory (R/R) B-cell lymphomas due to concern for neurotoxicity (NT). Limited evidence exists for axicabtagene ciloleucel (axi-cel, Yescarta®) in SCNSL patients. METHODS In this retrospective study, 15 R/R lymphomas patients with SCNSL (14 DLBCL, 1 chronic lymphocytic leukemia) were treated with commercial axi-cel between March 2019 and April 2021 for systemic disease and assessed for NT using the Immune Effector Cell-Associated Neurotoxicity Syndrome (ICANS) and CTCAE toxicity grading systems. RESULTS Seven of 15 patients (47%) developed NT, all of whom had cytokine release syndrome (CRS). Four (27%) developed severe NT (Grade III-IV). In the 8 patients (53%) with active SCNSL, 6 (75%) did not develop NT and 2 (25%) developed severe NT. In the 4 severe NT patients, all had multifocal CNS disease and 3/4 (75%) had leptomeningeal disease. Two thirds of patients previously treated with RT developed severe NT (1 whole brain RT, 1 skull base). The third patient had RT to the eye. Four of 8 (50%) patients with prior intrathecal chemotherapy developed severe NT. Five patients relapsed (3 in the CNS), none of whom had NT. At 11.7 month median follow-up, 8 patients remain alive, 5 are deceased (1 from NT, 3 from progression, 1 from infection), 2 lost to follow-up. The patient who died from NT had prior temporal arteritis. Three additional patients with autoimmune disease did not develop severe NT. CONCLUSION In this limited cohort, presence of SCNSL did not increase NT incidence compared to historical outcomes of CAR T-cell therapy patients without SCNSL. This cohort will be compared to CAR T-cell therapy patients without SCNSL. Prospective studies of CAR T-cell therapy in SCNSL patients will be informative.