ASH 2024 | Predicting mortality using body composition in patients with myeloma receiving bispecific antibodies

So we were very interested in looking in more detail at our patients who are receiving BCMA bispecific antibodies and particularly trying to understand if we could look at predictors for patients who may have an earlier or higher mortality rate associated with them. So what we did was that we took the PET/CT scans which were performed at screening and we performed some software analysis on the whole-body CT component to identify their body composition. Specifically, we were looking at the skeletal component, the muscle component, the adipose tissue component, and the organ sizes for those patients. When we looked at these correlates and we also compared them to a group of controls which were patients with MGUS or smoldering myeloma. When we did this and we took approximately 55 to 60 patients in that we found that patients were more likely to have a mortality if they had a lower skeletal muscle mass and a smaller lung volume. Now that’s super interesting because what that’s correlating is potential frailty or senescence associated with the mortality with immunotherapies. And then the second piece of work that we’re about to do is to try and understand why low lung volumes correlate with mortality. Now that may well postulate to be associated with an increased infection risk and their inability to clear recurrent viral infections that we know happen with BCMA antibodies. So watch this space for further information but clearly, there is a big piece of work to try and optimize patients prior to receiving bispecifics with potentially exercise or physiotherapy.

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