Doctors in China said a homegrown cell therapy saw initial success in children with a severe autoimmune disorder, the latest sign that mainland biotech firms are catching up with western peers in developing cutting-edge treatments for hard-to-treat diseases.

Twenty patients aged six to 19 years old suffering from systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), commonly known as lupus, were given so-called CAR-T treatment developed by Chongqing Precision Biotech Co. starting in March at a hospital in eastern city Hangzhou. Prior standard treatments had failed to improve the illness, in which the body’s immune system attacks organs and sometimes causes butterfly-shaped rashes, state media including the Global Times reported Wednesday.

The earliest patient in the Hangzhou trial, a 12-year-old girl, no longer exhibits lupus symptoms six months after receiving Precision’s immunotherapy, in which disease-fighting T-cells are engineered and multiplied in labs before being re-infused into a patient to fight disease.

Since then, researchers have completed CAR-T treatment on another 19 pediatric patients. All have experienced various levels of remission, though the follow-up period remains too short to know whether the efficacy will be sustained.

It’s the latest in a plethora of similar CAR-T trials underway in China to study the effectiveness of the cell therapy’s potential to eradicate diseases from blood cancer to autoimmune disorders like lupus in which patients’ disease-fighting cells wreck their bodies.

The Hangzhou trial also shows how fast China is catching up with rivals in the west. Earlier this year, a German medical team that first sparked enthusiasm for the CAR-T approach to treating autoimmune disorders with a 2022 paper presented longer-term data from 15 patients showing more than half of them had achieved remission.

Precision didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Chinese results were presented only to local media, and have yet to be peer-reviewed. And despite China’s boasting one of the world’s largest number of CAR-T trials, few of its therapies have secured regulatory approval.

Still, Chinese firm Legend Biotech Corp.’s CAR-T treatment for multiple myeloma, Carvykti, has been licensed by Johnson & Johnson and approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. That already has global pharmaceutical giants betting on Chinese players, including Novartis AG’s partnership with Legend and AstraZeneca PLC’s acquisition of local cell therapy developer Gracell Biotechnologies.

Bloomberg

A researcher works inside the laboratory ahead of manufacturing the GeneFinder Covid-19 Plus RealAmp testing kit at the Osang HealthcareCo. headquarters in Anyang, South Korea, on Monday, May 4, 2020. Photographer: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg (SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg)

Chinese Hospital Sees Cell Therapy Promise In Big Lupus Trial