However, Tony Butler, an analyst with Guggenheim Partners said he communicated with Kite and that the death of the patient did not seem to be related to the immune response created by CAR-T even though he couldn’t confirm this with Kite.

The company acknowledged that a cancer patient died during the trial of its KTE-C19 cell therapy, but said the death was found to be unrelated to the treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

The fact that Kite has been so forthcoming with its clinical trial results is very unusual in the pharmaceutical industry with an ongoing trial, which indicates just how much the company has been affected by rumors that the patient death would have a major impact on its treatment. Belldegrun said after the sudden death of the patient included in the study, a clinical investigator reviewed the matter and found that the death was unrelated to the company’s treatment product. After appropriate discussions with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Kite continued to enroll and treat patients in its study, which was never placed on clinical hold.

According to Belldegrun, the therapy exhibited encouraging outcomes in some patients and they have seen cancer vanishing in those temporarily and tumors were melting away. “We believe the KTE-C19 clinical findings are in line with previous results demonstrating the potential of this promising therapeutic approach”, Belldegrun said.

News of a patient dying is not at all surprising because the experimental treatment is targeted for patients whom prior treatment has failed. The therapy genetically modifies T white blood cells in patients so that they attack cancerous cells.