Conclusions:
The COG CT committee conducts innovative trials to improve patient outcomes following autologous, allogeneic and immune effector cell therapies. Relapse remains a significant cause of treatment failure, and the CT committee strives to make further improvements through innovative trials of new preparative regimen strategies, incorporation of maintenance therapy, and by facilitating multicenter studies of relapsed or refractory solid tumors with emerging cellular treatments such as tumor specific lymphocytes52 or NK cell-based therapies53. Supportive care for CT patients is also critical, particularly for viral infections. A trial of CMV directed prophylaxis will open within the year. In addition, COG has existing infrastructure and CT expertise to explore multi-center trials evaluating antigen specific T cells targeting viruses,51 tumor-associated antigens,54, 55 and to control viral infections and malignancy in HCT patients. Finally, the broadening applicability of CAR-T cells targeting CD19+/-CD22 and other combination targets in the pediatric setting56 represents a unique opportunity for the COG CT committee to support advanced phased clinical trials for CAR-T approaches.
Author contributions: CLK and JEL wrote the paper, all authors critically revised the paper and approved the final version.
Conflict of interest disclosure: JEL has a patent for GVHD biomarkers and receives royalties from Viracor. CLK was on an advisory board for Horizon Therapeutics.