Dr. Raje Discusses the Impact of bb2121in Myeloma

Noopur Raje, MD, director, Center for Multiple Myeloma, Massachusetts General Hospital, discusses the impact of bb2121 and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy for the treatment of patients with multiple myeloma.

bb2121 could be an important addition to the armamentarium, Raje says. This therapy is resulting in stringent responses in patients with minimal residual disease (MRD)-negativity; this is unexpected to observe in a heavily pretreated patient population. Data from the phase I trial were very encouraging, with a median progression-free survival (PFS) of close to 1 year. The fact that there wasn’t much toxicity was also very reassuring, Raje adds.

Another exciting aspect of the data is the fact that median PFS for penta-refractory MRD-negative patients was longer than 17 months. The hope is that CAR T-cell therapy will cure myeloma. Raje says oncologists need to be a little more realistic, but that doesn’t minimize the results they’re seeing.