Yael Cohen, MD, on Background for and Key Findings from the Updated CARTITUDE-2 Trial With Cilta-Cel in Refractory Myeloma – Cancer Network

CancerNetwork, sat down with Yael Cohen, MD, to discuss the research that lead up to the phase 2 CARTITUDE-2 trial, examining the use of ciltacabtagene autoleucel for those with lenalidomiderefractory multiple myeloma

In an interview with CancerNetwork, Yael Cohen, MD, a senior physician in the Department of Hematology at Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, lent context to the updated findings of the phase 2 CARTITUDE-2 trial (NCT04133636), which were presented at the 2021 American Society for Hematology Annual Meeting & Exposition, examining ciltacabtagene autoleucel (cilta-cel) in patients with lenalidomide (Revlimid)refractory multiple myeloma.1

The CAR T-cell therapy was assessed in the phase 1b/2 CARTITUDE-1 trial (NCT03548207), which highlighted an overall response rate of 97.9% with a stringent complete response rate of 80.4% after a median follow-up of 18 months.2 The duration of these responses were examined in CARTITUDE-2, the results of which very encouraging, according to Cohen.

Transcript:

CARTITUDE-1 was testing cilta-cel in a very heavily pretreated group of patients; these were patients with relapsed/refractory myeloma after a median of 6 lines of therapy. These patients were known to have an expected very poor prognosis with any other alternatives available. Their overall response rate in CARTITUDE-1 was close to 98%. [Therefore], this was really a game changer. Actually [at] this [year's] ASH, there [were] the updated and very exciting results also on the durability of [these responses]. At 2 years, over 60% of the patients are still maintaining a response and the PFS was not reached.

Because they offer these attractive, exciting resultsas [with] other drugs in myelomathis is [being] taken to earlier lines of treatment; this is the CARTITUDE-2 trial. TheThis trial actually has several different cohorts and [in] cohort A, which is the study I'm presenting this evening, some patients [had] 1 to 3 lines of [prior] therapy. These are earlier patients [with] 20 patients [included]. These patients were on and then refractory to an [immunomodulatory agent] and proteosome inhibitors. [Additionally], 95% also had an alkylating agent [and] 65% had daratumumab [Darzalex]. These patients were also lenalidomide [Revlimid] refractory, so these are tough patients to get durable responses [in], as well. This was the population, and they got a single infusion of cilta-cel in this study.

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Yael Cohen, MD, on Background for and Key Findings from the Updated CARTITUDE-2 Trial With Cilta-Cel in Refractory Myeloma - Cancer Network