daratumumab

In an important paper published recently in the journal Blood, researchers from the Netherlands and Belgium correlate the response to daratumumab (dara), the anti-CD38 monoclonal antibody, to the level of CD38 expression on the myeloma cells and whether or not complement inhibitory proteins (CIPs) CD55 and CD59 emerge with treatment. A separate report in Blood from a joint Danish, Netherlands, Italian, and US team summarizes the findings of a phase I/ II study combining dara with lenalidomide + dexamethasone to show that the combination produces responses in 81% of patients versus approximately 30% with dara alone. These results led to the development of the POLLUX trial, which recently confirmed the approximately 80% response rate for the combo with 78% of patients still in remission at close to 2 years. The results of the combination of dara with bortezomib (Velcade®) and dexamethasone (the CASTOR trial) were reported at ASCO in June this year and have just been published in the New England Journal of Medicine. In this case, the response rate was 82.9% but with shorter follow-up thus far. 

As usual, far fewer myeloma-related abstracts will be presented at this year’s meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) than are presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) each December.  However, there is quite a bit of excitement about the results of the phase III CASTOR study to be presented at the Plenary session on Sunday, June 5. This randomized trial compares daratumumab plus bortezomib (Velcade® - [V])/ dexamethasone [d] versus Vd alone. Since this is a “late-breaking” plenary abstract, the abstract is not being released until Sunday, June 5^th at 7:30 am (EDT). However, the positive interim results were provided in a press release on March 30, 2016. Beyond this abstract, the other interesting aspect of this year’s ASCO meeting is