A novel treatment developed by researchers at The Tisch Cancer Institute of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai could offer blood cancer patients a new lease on life.
The therapy called talquetamab induces the immune system to kill bone marrow cancer cells. It has been effective in as many as 73 percent of patients with multiple myeloma in two clinical trials.
What is multiple myeloma?
Myeloma is a type of blood cancer that develops from plasma cells, a type of white blood cell made in the bone marrow. Myeloma is sometimes called multiple myeloma because most patients have multiple tumors affecting several areas of the body at once, such as the spine, skull, pelvis, and ribs. It is the most aggressive type of bone marrow cancer.
Multiple myeloma kills around half of the patients within five years of a diagnosis
Multiple myeloma causes no symptoms until it reaches an advanced stage when sufferers eventually begin to experience persistent bone pain, tiredness, or repeated infections. There is no cure for myeloma. However, once identified, the disease can be controlled by chemotherapy and stem cell transplants but can’t be cured fully.
Talquetamab, administered intravenously, gave a new lease on life
Talquetamab offers hope to patients whose myeloma has stopped responding to most available therapies.
Ajai Chari, MD, Director of Clinical Research in the Multiple Myeloma Program at The Tisch Cancer Institute and lead author of studies said, “This means that almost three-quarters of these patients are looking at a new lease on life,”
“Talquetamab induced a substantial response among patients with heavily pre-treated, relapsed, or refractory multiple myeloma, the second-most-common blood cancer. It is the first bispecific agent targeting the protein GPRC5d in multiple myeloma patients.”
