Biotech Values

[poorgradstudent]

CAR-T / Off and On:

ZIOP's CAR-T trials for MerckKGa are not yet in the clinic, but will also utilize Rheoswitch technology.

Let's accept that ZIOP has a switch that you can use to turn the CAR-T off and then turn it on. In that case, my question would be: if you turned it off, why would you ever want to turn it back on again?

Here are the scenarios as I see it:

1) Inject CAR-T. The patient responds positively with manageable adverse events. No reason to turn it off.

2) Inject CAR-T. The patient sees unacceptable adverse events. Here I see 3 options:

a) The CAR-T is directly responsible for the adverse events. You turn it off and have no reason to turn it back on.

b) The adverse events are indirectly caused by the CAR-T but have no viable prophylaxis/treatment. In that case, then you have to turn the CAR-T off and you can't turn it on again.

c) The adverse events are indirectly caused by the CAR-T but have a viable prophylaxis/treatment. In that case, I don't see any reason why the CAR-T needs to be turned off as you can apply prophylaxis pre-emptively or treatment concurrently. In this case, CAR-T is never turned off so no need to turn back on.


So where is the scenario where you can turn it off and then turn it on again, and how frequent would this scenario present itself?