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Focus: Multiple Myeloma Indication
Multiple Myeloma is the second most common hematologic malignancy and is largely considered incurable. The promising results obtained with the bluebird bio’s idecabtagene vicleucel (bb2121) and Janssen - Legend Biotech’s JNJ-68284528 (LCAR-B38M) brought CAR-Ts at the forefront of the clinical research.
B-cell Maturation Antigen (BCMA) is an antigen that has been shown to be specifically expressed in myeloma cells. With the ASH Annual Meeting 2019 close at hand, we performed a comprehensive pipeline analysis of BCMA targeting CAR-Ts in Multiple Myeloma indication.
We had two specific objectives
We identified47 BCMA targeting CAR-Ts
Our detailed analysis of clinical trials from various registries showed that 47 BCMA CAR-Ts are under clinical development by 40 companies. Idecabtagene vicleucel (ide-cel) leads the pack being the ONLY candidate in Phase 3.
The results from the Phase 2 CRB-401 trial, published in May 2019, showed that ide-cil offered an impressive ORR of 85%. However, the median PFS of 11.8 months somewhat disappointed experts who were expecting ide-cel to be a curative therapy.
Could combining BCMA CAR-Ts with another agent increase its efficacy? Notably, only about 30% of trials are investigating BCMA CAR-Ts in combination with another agent. In other words, about 70% of trials are studying BCMA CAR-Ts as monotherapy.
How are these BCMA targeting CAR-Ts differentiated? CAR-T design, target patient pool, or anything else? We will soon publish our findings on this question.
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