Dr. Smith Discusses CAR T Cell Persistence in Myeloma

Eric Smith, MD, PhD, medical oncologist, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell persistence in patients with multiple myeloma.

Smith says that a way to advance CAR T-cell therapy for patients with myeloma is with novel CAR T-cell vectors that enhance the depth and persistence of responses for patients. In myeloma, multiple studies with CD19 and BCMA CAR T cells have shown that the expansion and persistence of the gene-modified T cells correlate with deeper and more durable responses, he adds.

The reason that Smith says persistence is important is because a proportion of patients with myeloma are relapsing after CAR T-cell therapy. One reason for this relapse is that the target antigen gets downregulated or is not expressed in a small population of cells, and those cells end up growing out. For that reason, Smith says that investigators are looking at dual targeting.