New Blood Cancer Treatment Brings 90% Of Patients Into Remission

Multiple myeloma, one of the world’s most common blood disorders, has long been considered incurable. This form of cancer impacts plasma cells, crowding out healthy blood cells and spreading to multiple bone marrow sites throughout the body. Although drugs, radiation, and chemotherapy sometimes reduce patients’ symptoms and improve their quality of life, patients have historically lacked a way to rid themselves of the disease entirely and enjoy longer lifespans as a result.

A new treatment developed at Israel's Hadassah-University Medical Center could flip multiple myeloma treatment on its head by bringing patients into remission. A report by The Jerusalem Post claims that after the treatment’s most recent trial, 90% of 74 patients went into complete remission. The previous trial saw 71% of 20 patients respond to the treatment; at the end of the 18-month run, six patients still hadn’t experienced any sign of disease progression. 

The experimental treatment is a form of chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy, otherwise known as CAR T-cell therapy. The process begins with samples of the patient’s blood, separated into red blood cells and plasma. In the lab, scientists isolate the T cells from the plasma and add in a manufactured CAR, then allow the resulting CAR T-cells to multiply. Once the desired CAR T-cell quantity—roughly 5.8 million per kilogram of body weight—has been achieved, those cells are infused with the patient’s blood. The cells then target cancer cells and (hopefully) destroy tumors. 

Credit: Nguyễn Hiệp/Unsplash

For several years, CAR T-cell therapy has been used to bring lymphoma and leukemia patients into remission. While two forms of multiple myeloma-targeting CAR T-cell therapy are currently approved for use in the United States by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), these come with two significant drawbacks. Like other multiple myeloma treatments, both therapy versions are more effective at reducing symptoms and improving quality of life than extending patients’ expected lifespans. They’re also costly: Cilta-cel, a form of CAR T-cell therapy approved just last year, costs $465,000 per infusion and is only available to patients in the US and China. 

Due to the cost, “only 20% of those who need to receive [CAR T-cell therapy] in these countries actually get it,” Polina Stepensky, head of the bone marrow transplant department at Hadassah-University Medical Center, told The Jerusalem Times. “With the development led by the researchers at our Danny Cunniff Leukemia Research Laboratory, we were able to reduce the price dramatically and make the treatment affordable and accessible.” Stepensky’s team aims to conduct a US-based clinical trial and receive FDA approval within the next year.