VIDEO: Drug development represents major challenge in mantle cell lymphoma

Editor’s note: This is a previously posted video, and the below is an automatically generated transcript to be used for informational purposes. Please notify editor@healio.com if there are concerns regarding accuracy of the transcription.

This barrier is gonna be drug development. And (sighs) you're gonna hear everyone say that, but it is still a rare disease. And trying to develop drugs in the space is complicated from both a pharmaceutical company perspective. How much money do we wanna throw at this problem? But also from a trial accrual perspective, right? How long does it take us to enroll patients to these clinical trials to see this output? And so it's on both fronts. And I really do think that that's quite frankly the biggest challenge to mantle cell lymphoma. We're starting to see improvement. And that is a reflection of companies and trialists coming together around exciting molecules. I mentioned the bispecifics is one example. It's not the only one. But that enthusiasm, that excitement translates into accrual and translates into some of, like I said, these exciting (laughs) outputs, right? What does it mean if a patient has progressed after CAR-T and they're rescued with a bispecific? That's a big deal. And so now, we're able to, again, really accelerate development. So, yes, that may be 30% or 40% or whatever it is. But when you see it, and you have those patients in front of you, and you're seeing them three years later showing an ongoing response, that's hard to shake a stick at, right? I mean, you can complain all you want about, "I want it to be 70%." But look, if you take a single-agent drug and you get that kind of an output, it doesn't matter. You know that in five years, there'll be something you add onto it that sort of brings it to that level. And you don't have to worry too much. I mean, I guess, (laughs) I'm getting a little carried away here, but I'm a trialist as well as a translational investigator. So the questions you're asking are near and dear to my heart. But the bottom line is, I think, we have to convince pharma that this is still an important space to invest in. And I think as trialists, as we get these inside of molecules, we really need to get out there and share that with our colleagues. And that's what's happening. And build that momentum to ultimately try and progress to what I hope will one day be a cure. Or if not a cure, at least it'll look a lot like follicular lymphoma where we see these survival curves that are so long we have to stop measuring overall survival and focus on other surrogate endpoints. I hope we get there.