Jeffrey Wolf, MD, on Emerging T-Cell Engagers and Their Impact in Multiple Myeloma

Jeffrey Wolf, MD, of the University of California San Francisco, spoke with CancerNetwork® on the emergence of T-cCell engagers at the 2020 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition and their potential to phase out multiple myeloma drugs with limited response rates.

Transcription:

Last year, it was all about CAR [chimeric antigen receptor] T-cell [therapies]. This year, it’s all about T-cell engagers [TCEs]. It’s exciting that we have more than 1 target; that is, more than just BCMA [B-cell maturation antigen] as a target for CAR T. For TCEs, we have at least 2 more targets.

The thing is that if… CAR Ts, maybe the next generation of CAR T gives us more than a year of control, and if T-cell engagers continue to look so exciting, I’m not sure that drugs that [with] just give us 3 or 4 months, 30% response rates and 3 or 4 months of control are going to be able to compete. I really think that myeloma is going to get to a point where our first-line therapies are going to get us 5 or 7 years [of control] and then our second-line therapies, whether they’re CAR Ts or TCEs, can give us maybe 2, 3, or 4 more years. Now we’re out a decade and by then, we’re probably going to have newer therapies [with] second-, third-, and fourth generation CAR T or BiTEs [bispecific T-cell engagers]. I have to say that I’m becoming less interested in the drugs that just give us 30% responses for 3 months.