Drug Overview
Pipeline product bb2121 (Celgene/bluebird bio) is a second-generation chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapy targeting B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA), a promising target for immunotherapy which is found in 60–70% of multiple myeloma (MM) patients. CAR-T therapy involves the extraction of autologous T cells, which are then genetically engineered to express CAR and reintroduced back into the patient, where the cells are expected to target cancer cells.
The drug is in Phase II development for fourth-line MM and has the potential to be the first CAR-T therapy approved for this indication. As well as representing a possible new drug class for MM, this breakthrough therapy has shown very high efficacy in a patient population that has few treatment options. Phase I trial data in heavily pre-treated patients (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT02658929) showed that bb2121 results in deep and durable responses, with an overall response rate of 95.5% and complete response rate of 50%. Although bb2121’s initial target patient population will be limited to later lines of therapy, Celgene plans to develop the bb2121 program in earlier lines of therapy, which will increase its market potential.
Pipeline product bb2121 (Celgene/bluebird bio) is a second-generation chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapy targeting B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA), a promising target for immunotherapy which is found in 60–70% of multiple myeloma (MM) patients. CAR-T therapy involves the extraction of autologous T cells, which are then genetically engineered to express CAR and reintroduced back into the patient, where the cells are expected to target cancer cells.
The drug is in Phase II development for fourth-line MM and has the potential to be the first CAR-T therapy approved for this indication. As well as representing a possible new drug class for MM, this breakthrough therapy has shown very high efficacy in a patient population that has few treatment options. Phase I trial data in heavily pre-treated patients (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT02658929) showed that bb2121 results in deep and durable responses, with an overall response rate of 95.5% and complete response rate of 50%. Although bb2121’s initial target patient population will be limited to later lines of therapy, Celgene plans to develop the bb2121 program in earlier lines of therapy, which will increase its market potential.
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