Noopur Raje, MD, Discusses CAR-T in Relapsed, Refractory Myeloma

Dr. Raje, a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Multiple Myeloma Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, discusses the KarMMa-3 study, moving chimeric antigen receptor therapy into earlier lines of treatment, and what that means for patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma.

“I think everybody is familiar with the fact that the median [progression-free survival] of this patient population was close to about 14 months compared [with] around four months with the standard of care, which really demonstrates that the risk of reduction of progression was as high as 51%.”

Dr. Raje pointed out that all participants in the KarMMa-3 trial were triple-class exposed, including 65% who were triple-class refractory and 95% who were daratumumab exposed—an overall difficult to treat patient population.

“If you look at the KarMMa-3 trial, it is not an earlier line of treatment, but it is going to allow us to get more patients on so that they can benefit from these transformative treatments going forward…looking at refractory disease, we know what the outcome of these patients is. We also know that these are the patients who are rapidly progressing; we do not have the time to catch them to give these drug products, and that’s why moving all of these trials earlier on and providing access is absolutely critical.”