Every patient evaluated in a small early-stage lupus trial has stopped taking immunosuppressant drugs after a single infusion of an experimental donor-derived cell therapy, Adicet Bio reported on Sept. 28. More than half of the patients followed for a full year met a standard definition of remission.
For the roughly 204,000 Americans living with systemic lupus, most of them women, the result points toward a different kind of treatment. It is not a new option patients can request at their next appointment. The therapy, prulacabtagene leucel, or prula-cel, has been tested in a few dozen people, is not approved, and has not yet entered the larger pivotal study that regulators require.
