Health-related quality of life in patients with hematologic malignancies treated with chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy: review and current progress

Abstract

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy has transformed the care of patients with relapsed/refractory B-cell-derived hematologic malignancies. To date, six CAR T-cell therapies, targeting either CD19 or B-cell maturation antigen, have received regulatory approval. Along with the promising survival benefit, CAR T-cell therapy is associated with potentially life-threatening adverse events, including cytokine release syndrome and immune effector cell-associated neurotoxicity syndrome. While clinical trials evaluating CAR T-cell therapy consistently report the incidence of these adverse events, most trials do not collect health-related quality of life (HRQoL) data. As such, the impact of the CAR T-cell therapy process and related adverse events on the physical and psychological well-being of patients remains uncertain. HRQoL and other patient-reported outcome (PRO) assessments in patients with relapsed or refractory hematologic malignancies are of utmost importance, as individuals may have unmet needs and a high demand for tolerable therapy if a cure is not obtained. In addition, it is important to standardize methods of data collection to better assess the impact of CAR T-cell therapy on quality of life, optimize patients’ care and costs, and enable comparisons between different studies. We conducted a literature search up to June 2023 to identify the HRQoL tools used in clinical trials and in real-world studies investigating CAR T-cell therapy in patients with lymphomas or leukemias. In the present comprehensive review, we summarize the most commonly used CAR T-cell specific and non-specific HRQoL tools and discuss how the use of HRQoL and other PRO tools may be optimized.