BioCentury
ARTICLE | Product Development

CNS CAR crash?

More theories on cerebral edema deaths in Juno’s ROCKET trial for JCAR015

December 2, 2016 9:56 PM UTC

Juno Therapeutics Inc. and other investigators in the CAR T field don’t know what caused fatal neurotoxicity in the Phase II ROCKET trial of CAR therapy JCAR015. But it appears the study’s CNS disease exclusion criteria could be a contributing factor.

On Nov. 23, Juno said it placed ROCKET on clinical hold following the deaths of two more adult patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). There have now been five deaths in the trial, all due to cerebral edema. ...