My name is Rakesh Popat and I'm a haematologist based at University College Hospital in London in the UK and I'm here at the IMS meeting in Rio de Janeiro. One of the abstracts that I'm presenting is investigating the oral toxicities that are associated with talcotumab. So talcotumab is a bispecific antibody which is now licensed for patients with multiple myeloma. Unlike teclistomab and l-ranatab it hits a different target known as GPRC5D and is very effective for patients. But because it hits a different target it is associated with a number of side effects that can affect your mouth namely taste disturbances and a dry mouth. But what we know when we treat patients is that the taste disturbance can be a particular problem because you lose your sense of taste and so you do not gain any pleasure from food and indeed it can become very difficult to eat and patients can become quite upset from that. It can make an impact on quality of life and you can lose a lot of weight. What we know from the current studies is that our ability to understand that is very limited because the tools that we have are unable to distinguish it to any degree of clarity. So what we did in this study is that we used some questionnaires that we borrowed from our oral health colleagues and we gave it to our patients and it was really insightful. What it showed was the onset of the taste disturbance which happens at two and peaking at three weeks after the starting of treatment and then it starts to settle down. We see that the rest of the oral toxicities improve but the taste disturbance continues whilst on talcumab but the great news is that when you stop talcumab is that these side effects completely resolve at three months following treatment. So essentially what does that tell us? Well the first thing is we now have a tool which can help patients to report the side effects in great detail of clarity to their physician. The second thing is that these questionnaires identify the toxicity quicker than the physician will identify them. The third thing it means that you can have a conversation and the clinician and the patient can work out about stopping treatment or interrupting treatment to allow the toxicity to get better because what we've clearly demonstrated is that by stopping the treatment then the side effects get better. So we're hoping to expand this in a greater number of patients and have some real clarity and really give this tool to your healthcare professionals to help you tell your patient as to what's going on. Thank you for listening.
HealthTree • October 3, 2024