Can Anakinra Spare Tocilizumab in Management of CAR T-Cell CRS?

BOSTON—The scramble for tocilizumab (Actemra, Genentech) as a treatment for severe COVID-19 symptoms has created severe shortages of the drug, pressuring clinicians to ration its use. Oncology pharmacists are doing their part by looking for alternative treatments for one of the interleukin-6 (IL-6) receptor agonist’s more common indications: lessening the duration of cytokine release syndrome (CRS) after chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy.