Novel and Updated Therapies for Patients With R/R Multiple Myeloma
Luciano Costa, MD, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, discusses updates and novel therapies, including bispecific antibodies and T-cell engagers, for the treatment of patients with relapsed/refractory (R/R) multiple myeloma (MM) at the 2025 Lymphoma, Leukemia & Myeloma (LL&M) Winter Symposium in Miami, Florida.
Transcript:
Hi, I'm Luciano Costa. I'm a multiple myeloma physician at University of Alabama at Birmingham. I'm here in Miami at the LL&M Winter Symposium, where I had a chance to discuss the treatment of relapsed and refractory myeloma in 2025.
In this session, one of the things that we highlighted are really the series of trials that resulted or got updated in 2024 that will help shape the management of patients in the upcoming years.
Updates that we had on CARTITUDE-4, showing that ciltacabtagene autoleucel when added to pomalidomide, daratumumab, and dexamethasone or, pomalidomide bortezomib/dexamethasone outperforms those regimens continuously until progression in patients with 1 to 3 lines of therapy and lenalidomide refractory disease, not only in terms of progression-free survival, but also depth of response and most importantly, overall survival.
We also reveal the DREAMM-7 and DREAMM-8 trial that also were published in 2024. Those are belantamab-based combinations with bortezomib/dexamethasone, and with pomalidomide and dexamethasone, in those trials, they outperform other triplets, with the dara-Vd, or PVD respectively, in terms of progression-free survival, in the case of DREAMM-7, also overall survival.
This is likely to bring belantamab mafodotin back to the market in the United States and other jurisdictions and give another triplet base outpatient combination that we would have available for our patients.
There is a lot of enthusiasm for bispecific T-cell engagers. Of course, we have currently 3 available and approved in the United States. We should have in the upcoming years, phase 3 trials that should lead to definitive approval for those agents.
Also, a lot of interest on drugs or mechanism of actions other than T-cell redirecting therapy, particularly enthusiasm around the CELMoDs, particularly iberdomide and mezigdomide, and the never ending story about chasing the BCL-2 inhibitors, which seems to be a very fruitful approach to those patients with myeloma who harbor translocation 1114.
Source:
Costa L. Updates in Relapsed Disease. Presented at Lymphoma, Leukemia & Winter Symposium; February 7-9, 2025. Miami, FL.
