Ahmad Masri, MD, MS, on the Potential of Cell Therapy in Light Chain Amyloidosis
For World Amyloidosis Day, the cardiologist at the Center for Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy at Oregon Health & Science University discussed how Nexcella’s NXC-201 could help address unmet needs.
This is the second part of an interview with Ahmad Masri, MD, MS. For the first part, click here.
“The whole concept is that if you're able to identify an antigen on the plasma cells, then you are able to use a cell therapy approach in order to deplete and decrease those plasma cells. So, you essentially are able to attack them and deplete them at an earlier stage.”
Light chain (AL) amyloidosis is a systemic form of amyloidosis in which the plasma cells essentially become factories for misfolded light chain proteins, which build up in the body and cause a myriad of problems in various organs and tissues. Although AL amyloidosis bears some similarities to multiple myeloma (MM), and may be able to be treated with some of the same therapeutics as MM, it is a distinct disease with its own patient population. Currently, there are several treatment options available to patients with AL amyloidosis, including chemotherapy and hematopoietic stem cell transplant, that can address certain aspects of the disease in some patients, but on the whole a substantial unmet need remains for new treatment options. The emerging modality of chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapy, which has already helped to address unmet needs in patients with MM, may be a promising new horizon for the treatment of AL amyloidosis.
In observance of World Amyloidosis Day, recognized annually on October 26 by the patient and clinician communities, CGTLive™ spoke with Ahmad Masri, MD, MS, a cardiologist at the Center for Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy at Oregon Health & Science University, about the current landscape of care for AL amyloidosis and how cell therapy could potentially change this landscape. He discussed the unique disease pathology of AL amyloidosis and gave an overview of the current treatment options and the unmet needs that remain. Afterwards, he highlighted preliminary clinical results from patients who received Nexcella’s NXC-201 (HBI0101), an investigational autologous CAR-T therapy that targets B-cell maturation antigen that is currently being evaluated for the treatment of both relapsed/refractory MM and AL amyloidosis in the phase 1a/1b NEXICART-1 clinical trial (NCT04720313) in Jerusalem, Israel.
