COMy 2017 | Effective antibody therapy and updates from the POLLUX and CASTOR trials

Meletios Dimopoulos, MD, from the Athens School of Medicine, Athens, Greece, discusses effective antibody treatments for multiple myeloma (MM) at the 2017 World Congress on Controversies in Multiple Myeloma (COMy) in Paris, France. The first monoclonal antibody that was used in myeloma was elotuzumab and the combination of elotuzumab with thalidomide and dexamethasone, which is associated with a modest, but sustained improvement of progression-free survival (PFS). We now also have data from 3-4 years’ follow-up from this trial. Dr Dimopoulos mentions that there is still a sustained benefit in favor of elotuzumab thalidomide and dexamethasone. He then talks about two important update trials presented at the IMW meeting: the POLLUX trial (NCT02076009) and the CASTOR trial (NCT02136134) it was found that with longer follow up, there is an improvement in response rate. Even in the relapse setting, there are a number of patients who are achieving negative residual disease status and in this particular subset of patients, progression-free survival is even longer. Furthermore, there was updated information regarding the impact of daratumumab with thalidomide dexamethasone and daratumumab with bortezomib and dexamethasone in patients with adverse heterogenetic features, and it is important to note that with these triplets, we can ameliorate the outcome for these patients.