Factors to Consider When Treating Patients With Multiple Myeloma With Bispecific Antibodies in an Outpatient Setting

Ashley Rosko, MD, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, discusses factors to consider when administering bispecific antibody therapy to patients with multiple myeloma (MM) in an outpatient setting, which she discussed at the 2024 Great Debates & Updates (GDU) in Hematologic Malignancies meeting in New York, New York.  

Transcript:

Dr Rosko: Hi, my name is Ashley Rosko. I am a professor in the Division of Hematology at the Ohio State University. I'm also the medical director of the onco-geriatric program.

Lymphoma, Leukemia & Myeloma Network: How would an oncologist utilize bispecific antibodies as a treatment regimen for patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma in an outpatient setting? 

Dr Rosko: Importantly, when it comes to bispecific therapy, I think for a patient that has relapsed [from] therapy, [who has] progressed through 4 lines of therapy, it's always a question about whether or not a patient should receive a bispecific antibody or whether or not a patient should move on to [chimeric antigen receptor] (CAR) T[-cell therapy], which there are several different discussions at today's meeting regarding this.

For me, when I think about bispecific antibody therapy, I think about the tempo of their disease, their ability to come into the hospital at our institution for about a week and looking at the 2 toxicity profiles: cytokine release syndrome and neurotoxicity for patients with multiple myeloma. We walk patients through those toxicities [and] the ability to come to the clinic weekly for therapy after they've received their week of inpatient hospitalization.

Typically, our patients are doing quite well with bispecific therapy for relapsed diseases. What we do find, particularly for older adults, is that after patients get disease control, we tend to space the drug, and there's data to support spacing that drug with good efficacy.