Dr Garfall on the Inclusion Criteria for a Study Evaluating Ide-Cel in Myeloma After Suboptimal Transplant/Maintenance Response

“We required that patients [were not] in complete response [CR] after a standard induction regimen, autologous stem cell transplant, and at least 3 months of maintenance therapy. These patients all have had pretty intensive therapy before they enrolled and still had some detectable disease, as indicated by not having achieved CR.”

Alfred L. Garfall, MD, an associate professor of Medicine, director of the Autologous Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation in the Cell Therapy and Transplant Program at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania; and section chief of Multiple Myeloma in the Division of Hematology/Oncology in the Department of Medicine at Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, describes the inclusion criteria for patients with multiple myeloma in the phase 2 BMT CTN 1902 trial (NCT05032820).

Eligibility for the phase 2 study included patients with multiple myeloma who experienced a suboptimal response to standard first-line therapy but did not achieve a complete response (CR) after induction, received an autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplant (ASCT), and at least 3 months of maintenance therapy, Garfall begins. Prior to enrollment, he notes that patients were pretreated with intensive frontline therapies and still had minimal residual disease.

Patients on the study were treated with lymphodepleting chemotherapy, which included fludarabine and cyclophosphamide, before receiving CAR T-cell therapy idecabtagene vicleucel (ide-cel; Abecma). Safety run-in and stopping rules were established, and lenalidomide (Revlimid) maintenance therapy was quickly reinitiated following ide-cel.

Findings presented during the 2025 Transplant and Cellular Therapy Meetings showed that among evaluable patients (n = 38), 63% converted to CR by 6 months after receiving ide-cel.

Notably, at the time of enrollment, 57.5% of patients had a very good partial response (PR) following transplant; however, 40% of patients had only a PR after transplant, he adds.