Yael Cohen, MD, on Background for and Key Findings from the Updated CARTITUDE-2 Trial With Cilta-Cel in Refractory Myeloma

In an interview with CancerNetwork®, Yael Cohen, MD, a senior physician in the Department of Hematology at Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, lent context to the updated findings of the phase 2 CARTITUDE-2 trial (NCT04133636), which were presented at the 2021 American Society for Hematology Annual Meeting & Exposition, examining ciltacabtagene autoleucel (cilta-cel) in patients with lenalidomide (Revlimid)–refractory multiple myeloma.¹

The CAR T-cell therapy was assessed in the phase 1b/2 CARTITUDE-1 trial (NCT03548207), which highlighted an overall response rate of 97.9% with a stringent complete response rate of 80.4% after a median follow-up of 18 months.² The duration of these responses were examined in CARTITUDE-2, the results of which very encouraging, according to Cohen.

Transcript:

CARTITUDE-1 was testing cilta-cel in a very heavily pretreated group of patients; these were patients with relapsed/refractory myeloma after a median of 6 lines of therapy. These patients were known to have an expected very poor prognosis with any other alternatives available. Their overall response rate in CARTITUDE-1 was close to 98%. [Therefore], this was really a game changer. Actually [at] this [year's] ASH, there [were] the updated and very exciting results also on the durability of [these responses]. At 2 years, over 60% of the patients are still maintaining a response and the PFS was not reached.

Because they offer these attractive, exciting results—as [with] other drugs in myeloma—this is [being] taken to earlier lines of treatment; this is the CARTITUDE-2 trial. TheThis trial actually has several different cohorts and [in] cohort A, which is the study I'm presenting this evening, some patients [had] 1 to 3 lines of [prior] therapy. These are earlier patients [with] 20 patients [included]. These patients were on and then refractory to an [immunomodulatory agent] and proteosome inhibitors. [Additionally], 95% also had an alkylating agent [and] 65% had daratumumab [Darzalex]. These patients were also lenalidomide [Revlimid] refractory, so these are tough patients to get durable responses [in], as well. This was the population, and they got a single infusion of cilta-cel in this study.

References

1. Cohen YC, Cohen AD, Delforge M, et al. Efficacy and safety of ciltacabtagene autoleucel (cilta-cel), a B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA)-directed chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, in lenalidomide-refractory patients with progressive multiple myeloma after 1-3 prior lines of therapy: updated results from CARTITUDE-2. Presented at: 2021 ASH Annual Meeting; December 11-13, 2021; Atlanta, GA. Poster 3866.
2. Usmani SZ, Berdeja JG, Madduri D, et al. Ciltacabtagene autoleucel, a B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA)-directed chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapy, in relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma (R/R MM): updated results from CARTITUDE-1. J Clin Oncol. 2021,39(suppl 15):abstr 8005. doi:10.1200/JCO.2021.39.15_suppl.8005