ASH 2020: J&J/Legend’s Cilta-Cel Shines, But BMS/Bluebird’s Ide-Cel Is In First Place

Both BCMA-Targeting CAR-T Therapies Could Be Approved In 2021

Cilta-cel maintained high response rates in longer-term multiple myeloma data, but ide-cel causes less cytokine release syndrome and severe neurotoxicity – and it has a March decision date at the US FDA.

Multiple Myeloma Awareness: Bone marrow aspirate cytology of multiple myeloma, a type of bone marrow cancer of malignant plasma cells, associated with bone pain, bone fractures and anemia.
BCMA-targeting CAR-T therapies show durable responses in multiple myeloma • Source: Shutterstock

Longer-term results for Janssen Pharmaceutical Cos. and Legend Biotech Corp.’s ciltacabtagene autoleucel (cilta-cel) show that multiple myeloma patients treated with the B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA)-targeting chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapy maintained responses over time. But while the overall response and complete response rates reported on 5 December at the virtual American Society of Hematology (ASH) annual meeting are higher than those observed with idecabtagene vicleucel (ide-cel) from Bristol Myers Squibb Company and bluebird bio, longer-term data for ide-cel show lower incidences of cytokine release syndrome (CRS) and severe neurotoxicity. 

The BMS/bluebird asset also has the benefit of time, since a biologic license application (BLA) for ide-cel already is under review at the US Food and

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