Why is this research important?
Approximately 5,900 people are diagnosed each year with Multiple Myeloma, a type of blood cancer, and more than 24,000 are living with the disease.
While Multiple Myeloma is generally incurable, there are treatments available. Patients receive successive combinations of drugs for years but eventually the myeloma becomes resistant to current therapies. This means there is a need for new therapies and treatments that work in different ways to help patients into long-term remission.
What did we do?
The NIHR Manchester CRF at The Christie includes inpatient beds with 24hr research capability required for such early-phase clinical trials. Our wide referral network spans the whole of the North of England, Wales and Scotland and is the only dedicated early phase trials service for blood cancers outside London.
We participated in the trial for the first medicine in this class, Teclistamab, and several patients from that trial have been in complete remission for more than 3 years.
Due to this experience and expertise, we were asked to be the lead UK site for an early phase study of Elranatamab. Elranatamab is a new type of immunotherapy called a T-cell engager (TCE). It brings an antigen (a substance that starts an immune response in the body) on myeloma cells close to a person’s own T-cells (a type of white blood cell important for immune responses) to kill the myeloma cells.
Just over a third of patients participating (35%) achieved complete remission, and among these cancer could not be detected in 61% of people.
As a result of this efficient study delivery, we were selected to host the later phase study. Since then, Elranatamab has been approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and this therapy is currently being reviewed by NICE, as a treatment option on the NHS.
If approved, there is potential to benefit thousands of UK myeloma patients. Both studies show how research can bring effective new treatments to patients earlier.