Dr Mark Wildgust: Daratumumab Critical to Improving Patient Response

Daratumumab, alone and in combination with a proteasome inhibitor and immunomodulation, represents an important addition to the armamentarium of care for improving patient outcomes, especially response rate and progression-free survival, noted Mark Wildgust, PhD, vice president of Global Medical Affairs/Oncology at Janssen.

Transcript

Why have immunomodulatory drugs been so successful in relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma?

I think we've learned that immunomodulatory agents like lenalidomide [Revlimid] and pomalidomide have been quite effective. I think if you go back a couple of steps in terms of how we've got to where we are today, we saw thalidomide become a really important component of care. We're kind of moving then from that older chemotherapy-based regimen approach. You saw agents like thalidomide coming forward—brand new mechanism of action, modulating the microenvironment and seeing improvements. We then saw proteasome inhibitors [PIs] come forward, like Velcade. And then we saw them being used by themselves, then we saw them being used with IMiDs [immunomodulatory drugs].

And I think today what we see is that IMiDs are an important component of care. But going back to daratumumab for a second, I think that if you look at the magnitude of benefit that we're adding when we're adding daratumumab to these regimens, it's really clear today that daratumumab is in itself a critical, essential agent in terms of improving outcomes for patients.

And so I think we're at a point now where we can build regimens, like daratumumab plus a PI plus an IMiD, and we can get these very, very high response rates, depth of response, and improvement in PFS [progression-free survival]. And I think building those regimens today is really important. But I think daratumumab is a key part of that, and an IMiD is a piece of that, whether it be thalidomide, Revlimid, or pomalidomide.