VIDEO: High response rate for CAR-T in myeloma

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Effectiveness, it's incredibly effective. As I said, almost everybody responds and that includes older patients. So there was a study done in patients about the age of 75 and 70 and below, and both group responded equally. Actually, in that particular study, the numbers were slightly higher for older patients. The toxicities were not high in older patients either, so the responses are very high, 85 to 95% with complete remissions. We look at MRD negativity and more than half of the patients were MRD negative and we are beginning to have more data on sustained MRD negativity, means myeloma patients who respond are not becoming negative over 6 and 12 months, and that's a very promising start that we might be able to have some of these patients. keep that remission for a long period of time. Toxicity wise, common to all CAR T cells is what we call cytokine release syndrome, CRS, neurotoxicity and the third one is low blood counts, those are the three things we observe. The good news is that these toxicities, especially the first two, are less in myeloma compared to the CAR T experiences with other diseases, including lymphoma, so that's easier. The low blood counts continues to be an issue, not life threatening, but it's something we are working hard to see how we can mitigate it and we give some antibiotic prophylaxis, we can give growth factors, most of the patients over time recover their blood counts. CRS is something that happens early. It happens because when we inject the CAR T cells in patients and the CAR T cells starts recognizing myeloma cells and bind to it, two things happen. It kills myeloma cell on one hand, and on the other hand the cells grow, the CAR T cells grow, and that growth of CAR T cells very fast leads to the side effect. So quite often the CRS is also connected with myeloma response. We recognize CRS very easily. Fever is one of the major features of it, and then their lab test and other things, and we have no ways to control and treat it quite effectively and so we can control it quite well.