2509 Background: As a promising approach for some cancers, chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapy has limited success in solid tumors. Claudin18.2 (CLDN 18.2) is a stomach-specific isoform of Claudin-18, and highly expressed in gastric and pancreatic adenocarcinoma, the advanced form of both of which have urgent unmet medical needs. We previously developed and demonstrated ability of CLDN 18.2-specific CAR (CAR-CLDN18.2) T cells to eradicate CLDN 18.2-positive gastric cancer xenografts without obvious on-target off-tumor toxicity (Huang J. JNCI 2018). Methods: In this single-arm, open-label, first-in-human phase I pilot study (NCT03159819) to investigate the safety and explore the efficacy of the autologous CAR-CLDN18.2 T cells, patients with confirmed CLDN 18.2 positive advanced gastric or pancreatic adenocarcinoma aged 18 to 70 years received 1 or more cycles of CAR-CLDN18.2 T cell infusion(s) after lymphodepletion pretreatment (fludarabine and cyclophosphamide, with or without nab-paclitaxel) until disease progression or presence of intolerable toxicity. Adverse Event (AE) grade categorization is according to CTCAE 4.0, and tumor response was assessed per RECIST 1.1. Results: As of November 30th, 2018, 12 subjects with metastatic adenocarcinoma (7 gastric and 5 pancreatic) were treated with 1–5 cycles (total of 0.5 - 55 X 108) of CAR-positive T cells infusions. There were no serious adverse events, treatment-related death or severe neurotoxicity occurred in the study. No grade 4 AEs except for decreased lymphocytes, neutrophils and white blood cells. All cytokine release syndromes observed were grade 1 or 2. Among the 11 evaluable subjects, 1 achieved a complete response (gastric adenocarcinoma), 3 had partial responses (2 gastric adenocarcinomas and 1 pancreatic adenocarcinoma), 5 had stable disease and 2 had progression of disease. The total objective response rate was 33.3%, with median PFS of 130 days estimated using Kaplan-Meier method [95% CI (38, 230)]. Conclusions: This clinical study indicated that CAR-CLDN18.2 T cell therapy were safe and well tolerated and may have promising therapeutic efficacy in patients with advanced gastric and pancreatic adenocarcinoma. Clinical trial information: NCT03159819.

Two novel polymers of low molecular weight polyethylenimine cross-linked by (2-hydroxypropyl)-beta-cyclodextrin or (2-hydroxypropyl)-gamma-cyclodextrin showed lower cytotoxicity and higher transfection efficiency for the delivery of plasmid DNA compared with those of polyethylenimine (PEI, 25 kDa).

Our results revealed the aspects of QOL that need more attention for Chinese palliative care patients with advanced cancer. The association between the characteristics of patients, Karnofsky Performance Status, and their QOL also was identified.