So my name is Faith Davies. I'm based at NYU Langone Health in New York.
And it's really interesting this year at ASH, because two of the late breaking abstracts are actually about multiple myeloma. And I think that shows you about how much we're moving forward in the myeloma field.
And they're actually about things we've been talking about for a little while. So one is about Car T-cells. The other is about bispecific antibodies.
So let me take the Car T-cell on first. As everybody is aware, we have a number of different Car T-cells that are available. But one of the potential issues and problems is that you have to take the patient cells. You then have to have them manufactured and altered in, a laboratory, and then they get given back to the patient.
And depending on the kind of Car-T, that gap can be anywhere from two weeks to three months. And so for many patients, that's actually quite a long process. And it's a very specific process.
But what one of the, late breaking abstracts showed was that there actually might be what we call an off the shelf approach to Car-T’s, where you could take a manipulated, injection. I guess I'm going to call it a bit like a vaccine, but it's a little bit different.
But you can give that to the patient. Because it's very specifically targeted, it will just go to the T cell and convert it into a Car-T cell. So we don't have the issues and problems about the manufacture and so on.
As you can imagine, there's been a lot of work behind the scenes making sure that this just goes to the T cell and that it doesn't accidentally go to any other cells, and that also when it goes to the T cell, that it exerts its effect in a reasonably controlled fashion.
It doesn't make the T cell go too overexcited so that it can kill the myeloma. So and so they've used this now in four patients and they've had incredible responses and actually very, very few side effects.
So everybody is incredibly excited about this because it cut down the manufacturing time. It potentially means that we can do it as we would do any other injection.
We could say one day, okay, we think this is a good approach for you. Come back tomorrow and we can inject it and we can get going in the clinic.
So I think it's not only going to be effective. From I was going to say prolonging survival and a toxicity side of things, but it's also going to make Car-T cells much more available for the patient.
I mean, that the patient doesn't have to travel. So far and so on. So still very early. Only four patients tested, but very exciting. So that's the Car-T cell.
The other exciting data is the bispecific data. So up until now we've been using bispecific. So those are the antibodies with the two heads that grab a myleoma cell and grab a T-cell. Bring them together, make them work.
We've been using those in later lines since that repeat. But what's been presented as a clinical study comparing those drugs to our standard of care drugs in earlier lines.
So patients that have either had their first relapse up to their third relapse. And essentially what it's shown is that it is way more effective than our standard of care drugs.
So in this study, the standard of care with daratumumab with pomalyst and dexamethasone or daratumumab with velcade or bortezomib and dexamethasone, and I think it's probably the most impressive difference we have ever seen between two treatments in multiple myeloma.
And the buzz word for the meeting is 0.17, which is the mathematical number for, the difference between the two arms, with, if you're closer to one, it's worse if you're closer to kind of, a low number is better.
And so 0.17 is the most amazing one. And the importantly, patients seem to tolerate it really well.
There are a few things we have to be cautious of in the fact that because these drugs work on the immune system, they do have the potential to make patients more prone to infections. And so we have to be really, really conscious of that.
So patients require to have some regular antibiotics to help to protect them against infections. But also an infusion of, what we call immunoglobulin to help also to prevent and from infections.
So as with anything, it's not always a win win. But here it looks as if it's incredibly effective. But we have to get the message out there about managing infections because the last thing we want to do is to have patients in a great response, but then continuing to have infection after infection.
If our videos have helped you in any way and you're able to, please consider making a donation to help us continue this important work.
Your gift will go three times as far when we reach $500,000 by the end of the year. Every contribution, big or small, makes a difference and we're deeply grateful for your support.
HealthTree