VIDEO: CAR T-cell therapies showing promise in myeloma

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Many products right now in clinical trials are showing promise in treating myeloma, especially with CAR T-cell therapy. So one product that I'm really excited about is the CAR T-cell product that's also targeting BCMA, which has been the main target for CAR-T in myeloma, and Ito cell. So this product was still being studied in the iMMagine-1 study, and this study looked at patients with relapsed refractory myeloma. And this BCMA product was infused in, you know, maybe 150 patients. And the product has been shown to be really efficacious.

So, very similar response rates to cilta-cel, which is the commercial product that we're using, which is great. Although the duration of follow-up is still short, but the progression-free survival so far is really acceptable. So there seems to be some durability to the responses that we're seeing with this product. What's really cool about it is that the safety seems to be a little bit better than what we have. Although the follow-up, again, is still short. But cytokine release syndrome rates are looking pretty good, and so far there has been no delayed neurotoxicity, which is very promising. Again, the follow-up is still short, so hopefully with more mature follow-up, we'll learn better about this product, but I'm very excited about it.

Another product that's also promising is the CAR T from Bristol Myers Squibb that targets GPRC5D, which is another target that we've been fortunate to have a bispecific antibody that targets, but now we have a CAR-T product that's in clinical trials that will hopefully be, I think it will be approved at some point. And you know, it's shown better safety profile than the actual bispecific antibody that we use. So with targeting this GPRC5D protein, we see many unpleasant side effects with the bispecific antibody like skin rashes and dysgeusia and low appetite and weight loss and such. And with CAR T, these side effects seem to be better overall. So they don't seem to be as durable, or they don't last that long. And the rates of those side effects are much lower than with a bispecific antibody. So, that's another, you know, product that I'm definitely excited about.