Cellular Therapy Targeting BCMA in Resistant Multiple Myeloma
Posted: Monday, January 7, 2019
The initial results of a proof-of-concept trial for an investigational agent in patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma were presented at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) & Exposition (Abstract 957) as well as published in the journal Blood. Treatment with JCARH125, a B-cell maturation antigen-targeting chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, yielded an 82% overall response rate in heavily pretreated patients after a median follow-up of 11 weeks.
“Although durability of response and response rate in a greater number of patients remain to be determined, early experience with JCARH125 supports a favorable risk-benefit profile and rapid clinical development,” stated Sham Mailankody, MBBS, of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, and colleagues regarding the ongoing trial.
The data reported from the multicenter, phase I/II EVOLVE trial included 44 patients with a median of 7 prior lines of therapy; 77% had high-risk cytogenetics. At the lowest dose level of 50 × 106 CAR T cells, the overall rate of response was 79%, with 43% achieving stringent complete response or complete response.
As for toxicity, JCARH125 appears to have an acceptable safety profile, with 71% and 9% of patients experiencing grade 1/2 and grade 3/4 cytokine-release syndrome, respectively. Additionally, 18% of patients experienced grade 1/2 neurologic events, and 7% of patients reported a grade 3/4 event. Other frequent grade 3/4 adverse events included neutropenia (86%), anemia (50%), thrombocytopenia (43%), and infection (14%).
Disclosure: The study authors’ disclosure information may be found at bloodjournal.org.
