T-Cell Immunotherapies

The EORTC Quality of Life Group has initiated the Phase I-II development of an international health-related quality of life module for patients with haematological malignancies treated with chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy or T-cell engaging antibodies. Phase I includes a literature review and interviews with healthcare professionals and patients. The aim is to compile a comprehensive list of relevant quality of life issues for patients treated with CAR T-cell therapy or T-cell engaging antibodies. Phase II involves converting the selected issues into items.

We are currently in Phase I. We compiled a comprehensive list of 99 issues. The issue list is based on literature, clinical expertise, discussion groups, conversations with patients and representatives from patient organisations, and on the results from completed HCP interviews which were conducted in Germany, Croatia, Portugal, Australia, and the Netherlands.
We are currently conducting the last patient interviews. Patients are asked to share their experiences with CAR T-cell therapy or T-cell engaging antibodies. They are also asked to review the issue list and to score each issue on relevance and importance. Additionally, they can indicate which issues they feel are missing, which issues are redundant, and which issues should be reworded.

In addition, we are conducting a systematic literature review to identify which patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) have been used, at which timepoints they have been used, and which PROM domains have been affected most in patients with haematologic malignancies treated with CAR T-cell therapy of T-cell engaging antibodies.

An issue list of 99 quality of life issues has been created. The healthcare professional interviews are completed in the Netherlands, Germany, Australia, Portugal, and Croatia.

Currents status:

We are currently in Phase 1 of the module development. We have completed the healthcare professional interviews in the Netherlands, Germany, Portugal, Croatia, and Australia. We have completed the patients interviews in the Netherlands, Germany, Portugal, and Australia.

We are waiting for ethical approval in France and in the UK. As soon as we got ethical approval in these countries, they will also conduct the interviews. We expect approval soon.

The EORTC Quality of Life Group is making an international questionnaire about quality of life for patients with lymphoma and blood cancers treated with new therapies. These therapies are called CAR T-cell therapy and T-cell engaging antibodies.

The first step was to find out which issues might be important for patients treated with these new therapies. We did this by looking at information from articles and by conversations with clinicians, patients, and people from patient organisations. We also interviewed healthcare professional from the Netherlands, Germany, Portugal, Croatia, and Australia. This helped us to create a list of 99 quality of life issues.
We are currently interviewing patients.
They are asked to share their experiences with the therapy and to score the issues on the list. They are also asked to say if there are any issues missing, if any issues are unnecessary, or if any issues should be worded differently. Once this is done, we will move on to the next step of creating the questionnaire, were we will select the most important issues and turn them into items.