Aggressive lymphoma after CD19 CAR T-cell therapy

The development of a fatal, clonal, autonomously proliferating CD4−CD8− chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)+ peripheral T-cell lymphoma (PTCL) occurred 1 month after a patient received treatment with tisagenlecleucel for relapsed primary central nervous system lymphoma. The PTCL had a clonal T-cell receptor rearrangement, which was already detectable in the apheresis product for CAR T-cell manufacturing and 7 months earlier for autologous transplantation. Somatic DNMT3A and TET2 mutations in CD34+ stem cells and their progeny were detected in the PTCL, in the apheresis specimen that was obtained for CAR T-cell production, and in the autotransplant. The PTCL harbored an additional somatic TET2 mutation, which was already detectable in the CAR T-cell apheresis product and the final CAR T-cell product at very low frequencies, providing evidence that clonal hematopoiesis had contributed to lymphomagenesis.