Mitigating Adverse Events in CAR T-Cell Therapy: Mounzer Agha, MD

This content originally appeared on our sister site, Cancer Network.

Cancer Network spoke with Mounzer Agha, MD, of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine Hillman Cancer Center, about the encouraging safety profile reported from the CARTITUDE-2 trial investigating ciltacabtagene autoleucel (cilta-cel) for patients with previously treated multiple myeloma at the 2021 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting.¹

The strategies he detailed included reducing neurologic adverse events by use of more effective bridging therapy, frequent assessment of CAR T-cell–related immune effector cell-associated neurotoxicity syndrome, and handwriting assignments to detectmicrographia, among others.²

Transcription:

The most important thing I’d really like to emphasize is that in CARTITUDE-2, we showed an excellent safety profile.¹ So, unlike with CARTITUDE-1 where we encountered the cognitive and neuro-movement disorders, we [do] not seen that now anymore because we applied the mitigation strategies. By eliminating that, it opens the door to apply this treatment in earlier treatment settings.

REFERENCES

1. Agha ME, Cohen AD, Madduri D, et al. CARTITUDE-2: Efficacy and safety of ciltacabtagene autoleucel (cilta-cel), a BCMA-directed CAR T-cell therapy, in patients with progressive multiple myeloma (MM) after one to three prior lines of therapy. J Clin Oncol. 2021;39(suppl 15):8013. doi:10.1200/JCO.2021.39.15_suppl.8013
2. Einsele H, Parekh SS, Madduri D, et al. Incidence, mitigation, and management of neurologic adverse events in patients with multiple myeloma (MM) treated with ciltacabtagene autoleucel (cilta-cel) in CARTITUDE-2. J Clin Oncol. 2021;39(suppl 15):8028. doi:10.1200/JCO.2021.39.15_suppl.8028
3. 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