Dr Mouhieddine on Future Directions With Ferritin and ALC as Biomarkers in Myeloma

“We have another study that we are hoping to present at another [medical] meeting, once it’s finalized, where we created an online calculator that will be widely accessible [using] these 2 variables and a few others we found that when put together, can give you a good prediction on how [a patient] will respond to bispecific antibodies.”

Tarek Mouhieddine, MD, a medical oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School, discussed future research directions following results from a retrospective study that evaluated the clinical utility of ferritin and absolute lymphocyte count (ALC) as biomarkers of response to bispecific antibodies for the treatment of patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma.

During the 22nd Annual International Myeloma Society Meeting and Exposition, findings from the retrospective study, which Mouhieddine presented, indicated that ferritin levels and ALC were correlated with measures of efficacy to bispecific antibody treatment, including overall response rate, progression-free survival, and overall survival.

At a future medical meeting, Mouhieddine and coauthors hope to present an accessible online tool that will include ferritin levels and ALC, as well as other variables, as inputs that will predict a response to bispecific antibody therapy, he explained. The tool will function like an online calculator and use the given inputs to predict a response to treatment, he continued. Although the tool should not replace oncologist discretion in terms of giving a bispecific antibody vs not, it will provide an estimate for how long a patient will continue to respond to a bispecific antibody, he continued.

Moreover, single-cell data from the retrospective study indicated that there are certain immune compositions that affect patient outcomes, such as the levels of monocytes, macrophages, and natural killer cells, Mouhieddine said. These factors also play a role in predicting a patient’s response to bispecific antibodies, and targeting them with novel agents could also improve outcomes with bispecific antibodies, he concluded.