Services

CAR T Therapy

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy is an approach that uses the bodies own immune cells to fight cancer. It is showing great promise particularly in leukaemia and lymphoma and is offered here at King’s Private.

King’s Private is one of a handful of CAR T cell centres in the UK that are approved to give both the licenced autologous CD19 CAR T cell products, Yescarta, Tecartus and Kymriah under specific indications:

•  Axicabtogene ciloleucel (Yescarta) for patients with relapsed (lymphoma has returned) or refractory (lymphoma did not respond) diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL), primary mediastinal B-cell lymphoma (PMBCL) or transformed follicular lymphoma, who have had two or more previous courses of treatment.
• Tecartus for patients with mantle cell lymphoma which has relapsed or was refractory post anthracycline or bendamustine-containing chemotherapy, an anti-CD20 antibody therapy and a Bruton tyrosine kinase inhibitor (ibrutinib or acalabrutinib).
• Tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah) for patients with DLBCL or transformed follicular lymphoma who have had two or more previous courses of treatment.
• Tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah) for young adults aged 18-25 with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia whose cancer has come back two or more times or has come back after stem cell transplantation.

Our NHS partner King’s College Hospital was the first hospital in the UK to infuse CAR T cells to a patient with lymphoma in January 2019 and has rapidly become the largest CAR T cell centre in the UK. At King’s Private, our consultants are linked with our specialist haematology multi-disciplinary teams to ensure you are given the best advice for your treatment. We will also have access to state of the art clinical trials in CAR T cells in other disease not currently covered by the licenced indications in acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, myeloma and follicular lymphoma.

CAR T cell therapy is a complex treatment and can only be provided at a very small number of hospitals in the UK that have JACIE accreditation and perform stem cell transplantation. King’s Private will delivery CAR T cell therapy on a ward with specific CAR T expertise, with access to a variety of specialists that have had input into the management of the largest number of CAR T cell treated patients in the UK. We also have large level 3 intensive care unit facilities within the same building at King’s College Hospital with expertise in dealing with the potential side effects.

For further information please contact:

Kch-tr.KingsCAR@nhs.net and kch-tr.Private-Haematology@nhs.net