Roswell Park is spearheading efforts to study innovative CAR T-cell therapies in addition to offering traditional treatment approaches. Investigations to improve therapy outcomes for multiple myeloma are being led by experts such as Jens Hillengass, MD, PhD, Chief of Myeloma at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center; featured in our informational video. In addition, research at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center focuses on strategies to reverse immune dysfunction to prevent infections and control the endogenous immune response to multiple myeloma. Abecma, a new cellular therapy approach, is disrupting traditional approaches by offering patients who have no other treatment options left an opportunity for remission.
there's a new treatment for multiple myeloma that has recently been approved by the FDA. It's called epic MMA, or either sell, and it is a car T cell therapy for patients with relapse refractory multiple myeloma. This is now available at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. My name is ST Zynga's and I'm the chief of myeloma at Roswell Park in Buffalo, New York Car T cell therapy in multiple myeloma and also other cancers has been developed to kind of re educate T cells to attack cancer cells. If cancer develops in our body, obviously the immune system has missed something and was not able to kill these cancer cells. And T cells are an integral part of this kind of protection from cancer development and car T cell therapy works in the sense that the T cells are extracted from the patient, are collected in an apheresis, and then they are genetically modified so that they develop this kind Merrick T cell receptor on their surface to then be able to attack the cancer cells again for multiple myeloma. The target right now that is available is PCM ABC uh, maturation anti chain. So we have certain drug classes to treat multiple myeloma. The most common ones are so called protease inhibitors immuno model a Torrey drugs and antibodies. When patients are refractory to all these classes, Um, and also different sub kind of substances out of these classes, then the treatment oftentimes has to fall back on class chemotherapy drugs. The benefit of this treatment is that it has shown in clinical trials to be very effective to bring patients even if they had a lot of prior treatment lines, even if the disease is very refractory to conventional treatment. This treatment has shown that even with the high tumor burden, the patients have can develop a very deep response in a very short period of time. Another benefit is that it can last for quite some time. Unfortunately, it's not the cure for myeloma yet, but it brings patients in a deeper mission for quite some time, several months up two years. Another benefit is that at the moment, those patients will be off treatment after this epic MMA therapy because until now most treatments are treated until progression of the disease. So the Obama allows patients to be off treatment for quite some time, as long as they are in remission after that. At the moment, it's considered that they don't need a maintenance treatment, which is, of course, treatment free interval, which is very desirable for patients. So we think that these car T cells are a whole new area of treatment options for myeloma and also for other cancers. And we think that it will become a standard of care as all drugs or all treatments that have been developed. They are usually used or the first trials are in patients who have basically no other options. In my opinion, patients who would mostly benefit from these car T cell therapy are patients that are in a good performance status that have exhausted a lot of other treatments, almost all other treatments, and are willing to stay in patient for a few weeks because that's at the moment what we have to do for car T cells. Those patients would be perfect to get back man. The key takeaway for the approval of a back massage for the treatment of multiple myeloma is that we now have an option for patients with even a high tumor burden in late lines of treatment patients who are panda refractory have exhausted all other treatment options, Still have a chance if they're in a good kind of performance status, still have a chance to have a good response and some time of progression free survival well.
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