Can Patient Questionnaires Reduce the Need for Eye Exams with Belantamab?| Rakesh Popat, PhD

Hi, my name's Rakesh Papad and I'm a haematologist based at University College Hospital in London in the UK. I'm going to be presenting our trial which is called the PROMIS study, which is a multicenter study running in the UK. It's designed to look at new combinations for patients with relapsed multiple myeloma and trying to make them a bit more patient So in this particular cohort, we're looking at the combination of BALANTAMAD-MAFEDOTIN, which is a new antibody drug conjugate, which has recently been approved for patients with relapsed myeloma in combination with BORTESAMEB and DEXMETHOZONE. Now, we know already from clinical trial data that this combination is very effective and was better than the standard treatment in a large phase three clinical trial. But what we also know is that it causes a lot of side effects, particularly affecting the eyes. Typically causes a bit of blurring of vision and you can get some grittiness of the eyes. And as a result, patients have to see an ocular health care professional on a regular basis to have eye examinations. Now that, of course, brings an additional treatment burden for patients. So we've been looking at other ways to determine their eye side effects. So what this study is about is using something called a VRAAT, which stands for a visual related animastic tool, but essentially is a simple questionnaire that we developed previously on an older study with BALANTAMAD. And we were able to show retrospectively that it was able to detect severe side effects. And so what this study is all about is using it moving forward prospectively. And what we're doing is that in stage one, we have patients who will be receiving the eye check by an eye care professional, but we'll also do the questionnaire. And we're currently recruiting into this stage. For stage two, we're going to drop all eye assessments and patients will only be dosed according to the symptoms that they describe according to this questionnaire. And so we're hoping to have some results next year. It's currently recruiting in the UK. And we're really hoping that if this questionnaire is helpful, that it might remove that burdensome need for an extra visit to see an eye care professional.