So this year's congress season between ASCO and EHA has been amazing for myeloma. It's been the myeloma show. And there's a couple of really key abstracts that have stood out in my mind as crucial to pushing that needle towards cure for all patients of myeloma. One of the big ones has been the IMRAH trial. And this is where we took patients who were transplant ineligible and gave them the combination of isotuximab, bortezomib, lenalidomide, and dexamethasone. And for many years we thought, well, transplant is really the best way to get some of these amazing durable remissions. And IMRAH is really flipping that on its head. In fact, not only were the response rates so high, but the estimated, estimated median progression free survival of the IMRAH protocol is greater than 90 months. And this is providing the fact that some of our older patients for whom stem cell transplant may not be applicable, we may be able to put many of these patients in such a deep and durable remission that they never relapse from myeloma. So to me, this is one of the absolute standout abstracts of the Congress season this year. The other big standouts have been the potential comeback of BALANTAMAB-MAPHIDOTEN with the readouts of the DREAM7 and DREAM8 protocols. DREAM7 is the comparison of BALANTAMAB-BORTESMIB-DEXAMETHASONE versus DARE-TUMAMAB-BORTESMIB-DEXAMETHASONE. And DREAM8 has been BALANTAMAB-POMELIDOMIDE-DEXAMETHASONE versus POMELIDOMIDE-BORTESMIB-DEXAMETHASONE. Both of these manuscripts now published in the New England Journal of Medicine, both of them showing superiority of the BALANTAMAB-based arm. And just as a reminder, BALANTAMAB is that BCMA antibody drug conjugate. So it's a way of attacking BCMA without having to worry about some of those key side effects we see with bispecifics and CAR T cells that cytokine release syndrome. And one of the big things that we're learning is not just is this drug likely to come back, but we can extend the dosing. So let's take, for example, BALANTAMAB and POMELIDOMIDE. POMELIDOMIDE is just a pill. But if you could extend your BALANTAMAB infusion from every three weeks since it was initially approved to every four weeks or eight weeks or even 12 weeks for some patients, think about the improvement in the quality of life where you take pills at home and you only have to go in once every two to three months for an infusion. And again, this is a BCMA-directed therapy. So I believe between MRAHS, DREAM7 and DREAM8, we're actually going to be able to markedly improve the survival outcomes for our patients. And I couldn't be more excited.
HealthTree • June 21, 2024