CAR T Cells and Bispecifics Generate Excitement in Multiple Myeloma

Madhav V. Dhodapkar, MBBS, the Anise McDaniel Brock Chair and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Cancer Innovation, leader of the cancer immunology research program at Winship Cancer Institute, director of the Winship Center for Cancer Immunology and professor in the Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology at Emory University School of Medicine, discusses some of the immunotherapies, including chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies and bispecifics, currently under investigation for the treatment of patients with multiple myeloma.

At the 20th International Myeloma Society Annual Meeting, Dhodapkar highlighted linvoseltamab (REGN5458), a BCMA/CD3 bispecific being investigated in the phase 2 LINKER-MM1 study (NCT03761108). Here he advises community oncologists on what they should know about the safety and efficacy of the agent moving forward.

Transcription:

0:10 | Community oncologists are looking for options for [patients with] myeloma who have received multiple lines of therapy, and this really provides 1 of those options. It has a safety profile that we believe will eventually allow the usage of this in the community because it is in the end going to be the community oncologist who is going to be involved in administering this drug. Improving their familiarity with the adverse event of this therapy is going to be important over time. Obviously, the initial studies are often done in academic settings, but the drug will eventually be given, we believe, by the community doctors themselves.

1:02 | We're all very excited about the several immune-based therapies that have remarkable promise, this being 1 of them. There are other immune-based therapies, both CAR T’s and bispecifics, that are showing remarkable efficacy in different stages of myeloma. They are being tested in earlier stages of disease. I believe that even with this class of drugs, this specific drug will eventually move in that setting. I think that's really what we're excited about. It is a new change in sort of how we approach management of therapies, less chemotherapy, and sort of less conflict.