State of Cell Therapy in Multiple Myeloma: Nina Shah, MD

This content originally appeared on our sister site, OncLive.

OncLive spoke with Nina Shah, MD, hematologist/oncologist and associate professor of medicine, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, about the current state of cellular therapy in multiple myeloma.

Shah discussed the expansion of cell therapies in the field of multiple myeloma with multiple therapies, including autologous BCMA-directed CAR T-cell therapies. Data with the FDA-approved product idecabtagene vicleucel (Abecma) showed that one dose of therapy can induce long remissions in patients with heavily pretreated disease. Additionally, ciltacabtagene autoleucel was granted priority review designation by the FDA for the treatment of patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma.

However, a shortcoming of CAR T-cell therapy in multiple myeloma is that there is not yet a plateau on the survival curves, which means that the disease remains incurable, Shah continues. Although patients may derive a treatment-free interval of 1 year, they will eventually progress and require additional therapy. As such, novel cellular therapies are needed to improve the durability, accessibility, and persistence of T-cells for patients, Shah concludes.