My name is Hamza Hashmi. I'm a myeloma physician from Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. My early career has been focused on myeloma, plasma cell disorders with transplant and CAR-T. We have many abstracts presented as posters and oral presentation at ASH 2023. One of the abstracts that I actually find very interesting is looking at outcomes of CAR-T cell therapy in relapsed refractory myeloma patients who are defined as frail. In this particular multi-center consortium studies where we had five center contribute data, patients were patients in this study we found out that patients were deemed to be frail because of their age, because of their organ health, and because of their physical fitness, received CAR-T cell therapy and did not experience any significant side effects related to CAR-T cell therapy. These patients were still able to actually respond to CAR-T cell therapy. Those responses were not as durable as prolonged. We believe that was because some of the frailty was actually contributed by the myeloma itself and not the physiological age of the patients. The summary we actually learned from this study is that age alone should not be used as a contraindication but as a deterrent towards effective therapies like CAR-T cell therapy and patients instead of their age should be evaluated based on their frailty to see if they are good candidates for CAR-T cell therapy.
HealthTree • December 22, 2023