VIDEO: Study enrollment underway that could ‘change the treatment paradigm for myeloma’

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The main focus right now in the myeloma paradigm of treatment is, okay, how do we harness the best power of CAR-T? We're doing it later in the treatment of myeloma. We've tried to move it earlier, and we've seen better results. And now how about we just give it in the frontline setting?

And we do have a major study right now that's called the CARTITUDE 6 study that's sponsored by the European Myeloma Network and Johnson & Johnson. And this study is really pivotal, and it's going to really change the paradigm of treatment. And the main concept of this study is, okay, let's give induction therapy to our myeloma patients the way we do it in the current era, okay? With the quadruple therapy. And then, as you know, in myeloma, we consolidate our patients with autologous stem cell transplantation, which is the standard of care.

So now in this study, we're going to compare actually, or randomized patients to either get stem cell transplant or cilta-cell CAR-T cell therapy as consolidation and follow that with maintenance therapy. So we're going to compare stem cell transplant to CAR-T and see, you know, which one is going to win. And this is really challenging the role of stem cell transplant in myeloma.

This is going to take some time to read out, but this study will definitely change the treatment paradigm for myeloma. And I'm really excited about it. We have it open here at the Cleveland Clinic. It's enrolling very well in Europe and in the US so we're hoping to get results, you know, quicker than we think because of the rapid enrollment. And a lot of people in the field are excited about it.

Something that I always try to make sure that people in the community do, okay, is reach out to us early, okay. So a very important message to our community docs and docs who don't do myeloma every day, and they have a few patients with myeloma. You know, I think the main thing for these patients is to refer 'em to a tertiary care center early, meaning, you know, as soon as you know, they get diagnosed because we're doing, you know, CAR-T now early, right? As early as the first relapse.

So it's really important for the community docs to refer their patients to us as early as their first diagnosis or when they first get diagnosed, which they do a lot of times for transplant evaluation anyway. But even if the patients do not want to get transplant and they're not referred for transplant, I would highly encourage them to refer them as early as the first relapse when they have that first relapse to refer them to tertiary care center to start, you know, talking about CAR-T and potentially considering CAR-T early on in their journey.