Jakubowiak on Responses in Subgroups of Patients With Myeloma Who Received Cilta-Cel

In an interview with CancerNetwork^® at the 63rd American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting & Exposition, Andrzej Jakubowiak, MD, PhD, director of the Myeloma Program at University of Chicago Medicine, talked about different efficacy end points achieved with the use of ciltacabtagene autoleucel (cilta-cel) across subgroups of patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma, data for which was derived from the phase 1/2b CARTITUDE-1 trial (NCT03548207).

Transcript:

The overall response rate was close to 100% and stringent complete response was 82%. MRD [minimal residual disease] rates were also in this range, specifically 92% in evaluable patients. I would start to answer this question by indicating that when we did the subgroup analysis, we looked at subgroups as follows: patients over 65, African Americans and Black, 3 and more than 4 lines of therapy, triple-class refractory, penta-drug refractory, [high] cytogenetic risks, ISS [International Staging System] stage 3, baseline bone marrow involvement of different [ranging from less than] 30% or more than 60%, BCMA [B-cell maturation antigen] expression, and presence of soft tissue plasmacytoma. These were the categories which we specifically analyzed in this context. The most important finding is that across all of these categories, response rates were almost identical, with this high 90% to 100% range. That’s an extremely important observation.

What we noted were some subtle differences in duration of response, progression-free survival, and overall survival, which trended slightly lower. Groups of patients with extramedullary plasmacytoma who had higher cytogenetics and were International Staging System 3 [had low responses], enough that we indicated in our conclusions that while these are maybe performing not as well as another groups, they still clearly outperform [on cilta-cel compared with] anything that we have available for this group of patients. That is an important observation. We see [across] all treatment modalities in myeloma that those patients may [experience] lower efficacy. Here, we have the same response rate, but indeed, there is a difference for duration response, progression-free survival, and overall survival.

Reference

Jakubowiak A, Usmani SZ, Berdeja J, et al. Efficacy and safety of ciltacabtagene autoleucel in patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma: CARTITUDE-1 subgroup analysis. Blood. 2021;138(suppl 1):3938. doi:10.1182/blood-2021-146069