How Legend Biotech Plans to Expand the Reach of CAR-T Therapy | Dr. Ying Huang

[00:00:07]Hello everyone and welcome to the European Hematology Association 2026 Congress.

[00:00:12]I'm Sergey Badalyan from OncoDaily and I'm very glad to be bringing this conversation from Stockholm, Sweden.

[00:00:18]Today I'm joined by the CEO of Legend Biotech, Dr. Ying, for focused conversation on the latest advances of T-cell therapy and hematological oncology. We'll be discussing the significance of LB21 in vivo CAR-T, latest data presented during the Congress.

[00:00:34]What in vivo CAR-T therapy can potentially change in treatment strategy and scalability?

[00:00:40]Answer scientific rationale behind CD19 and CD20 targeting.

[00:00:45]We will also reflect how the experience with Carvykti has shaped the Legend's broader strategy in developing the next generation T-cell therapy and hear his perspective on where the field is heading.

[00:00:57]So, with that, let's begin.

[00:00:59]>> Hello. My name is Ying Huang and I am the CEO of Legend Biotech.

[00:01:04]We are a leading CAR-T cell therapy company and we have a commercial drug called Carvykti indicated for second line multiple myeloma. Today, Carvykti is the number one selling CAR-T therapy in the world with about $2 billion from 2025 global sales and we are partnered with Johnson & Johnson in promoting and selling and developing Carvykti.

[00:01:25]At this EHA meeting, we have some exciting data to share with you. It's a drug called LB21 and we are presenting the first phase one results from about 12 patients enrolled in the phase one.

[00:01:37]And in these 12 patients, six patients were dosed in dose level one and we see minimal expansion. And then six patients were also dosed in dose level two where we see consistent expansion.

[00:01:48]We're very encouraged to report that we have seen 100% response rate in six of the patients who were dosed in dose level two group. And what's more remarkable is that out of the six patients, five achieved complete response, which means that by PET-CT scan, there's no longer any cancer activities observed in the scan.

[00:02:07]So, this shows for the first time the promise of in vivo CAR-T therapy in treating refractory or relapse non-Hodgkin lymphoma. And we presented patients in 12 patients with different types, including DLBCL, mantle cell lymphoma, and follicular lymphoma. We're very encouraged by the manageable safety and also very early but encouraging preliminary efficacy from this data set here.

[00:02:31]At this EHA, we're seeing a lot of interesting data set advances in lymphoma, leukemia, and also multiple myeloma. But, we're very very encouraged that our data was also picked as a late breaker presentation. So, it's one of the six late breaker abstracts. That again shows the early promise of the LB2501, which is a CD19 and a CD20 dual targeting in vivo CAR-T. The reason why our scientists designed this dual targeting regimen is because there are three commercially available CAR-T therapy targeting CD19 for the treatment of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, including Yescarta, Kymriah, and also Brexucabtagene Autoleucel. However, many patients do relapse and unfortunately, that means their cancer is getting worse after therapy. And that is due to the relapse of the cancer from the escape or downregulation of CD19 antigen. Now, if we design a CAR-T therapy targeting both CD19 and CD20, it's much less likely for the cancer cells to mutate and develop resistance to both CD19 and CD20. So, this is why we developed this dual targeting regimen for our in vivo CAR-T.

[00:03:34]We're hopeful that we'll be able to demonstrate superior efficacy in the clinic versus the mono targeting CD19 therapies. We're leaving this EHA meeting Stockholm with a lot of excitement because we're seeing the early but very promising data from LB2501 as in vivo CAR-T therapy. And our plan is to file IND in the US FDA so that we can start phase one study in the US as soon as possible once the FDA clears our IND. We intend to bring this potential life-saving therapy to more patients with lymphoma.