New immunotherapy shows promise in treating multiple myeloma

An immunotherapy for multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer, is showing promising treatment results in a new study.

Dr. Matthew Ulrickson, a Medical Oncologist at Banner MD Anderson Cancer Center, joined “Arizona Horizon” to discuss the promising results of this new immunotherapy and what it could mean for patients going forward.

The new immunotherapy is a type known as CAR-T. It is delivered as an infusion of the patient’s own white blood cells that have been removed and engineered to attack the cancer. The treatment has revolutionized prospects for patients with other types of blood cancer, like leukemia.

For most people with multiple myeloma, death comes within a year and is painful. However, this new immunotherapy developed by Legend Biotech, a company founded in China, seems to have made their cancer disappear.

The key to the breakthrough in treatments has been the progress made in understanding the disease from the smallest level possible, according to Dr. Ulrickson. “Understanding the underpinnings, the causes of the disease at the DNA level, the cell level, has really led to a lot of advances,” Dr. Ulrickson said.

The study had a group of 97 patients. A third of them received a new type of immunotherapy. After five years, the cancer still has not returned in the third who received the new immunotherapy, a result never before seen in this disease.

For Dr. Ulrickson, this has meant seeing the tools for fighting cancers such as multiple myeloma expand at a rate not seen ever before. “For many decades, there was nothing other than chemotherapy,” Dr. Ulrickson said.

As for the future of the immunotherapy, Dr. Ulrickson is hopefully it can be expanded into uses of other diseases as more trials get off the ground. “There’s so many diseases that are not yet benefiting from CAR-T,” Dr. Ulrickson said. “We’ve got a number of trials in colon cancer, panceas cancer, lung cancer, things like that to try and advance the ball forward.”