Experts Impart Notable Information and Updates for Those With Blood Cancers

The 2025 ASCO Annual Meeting brought many different updates to light in the realm of hematological malignancies, including multiple myeloma and lymphoma, Dr. Nausheen Ahmed said in an interview with Dr. Joshua K. Sabari. Ahmed emphasized that there are various takeaways that are important for patients coming out of the annual meeting.

In the interview, hosted by Sabari, Ahmed highlighted studies like the PERSEUS trial, the ADVANCE trial, and others within the space, emphasizing what is important for patients to know.

Ahmed is a board-certified hematologist and associate professor, Hematologic Malignancies and Cellular Therapeutics, at The University of Kansas, KU Medical Center. Sabari is the editor in chief of CURE. He also serves as an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and director of High Reliability Organization Initiatives at Perlmutter Cancer Center.

Sabari: Hello. I'm Dr. Joshua Sabari, a thoracic medical oncologist at NYU Langone Health's Perlmutter Cancer Center in New York. I'm also the editor-in-chief of CURE magazine, and I'm really excited to be joined today by my colleague, Dr. Nausheen Ahmed. Dr. Ahmed, please introduce yourself.

Ahmed: Hello. I am Dr. Nausheen Ahmed, a transplant and cell therapy physician at the University of Kansas, specializing in cellular therapy. We had a great ASCO for the myeloma and lymphoma fields, and I'm going to highlight some of the interesting studies that were presented. My specialty is mostly CAR T, but I'll also discuss myeloma.

In newly diagnosed myeloma, we had results from the PERSEUS trial, a phase 3 study looking at subcutaneous Darzalex (daratumumab), Revlimid (lenalidomide), Velcade (bortezomib), and dexamethasone (Dara-VRd) with Darzalex and Revlimid maintenance in transplant-eligible patients with newly diagnosed myeloma. This was compared to a control arm of VRd and Revlimid, and it clearly continues to show improvement in progression-free survival and minimal residual disease (MRD) rates.

We also had data from the ADVANCE trial, a randomized multicenter trial of Kyprolis (carfilzomib), Revlimid, and dexamethasone (KRd) with or without Darzalex in newly diagnosed myeloma. These were also transplant-eligible patients, and stem cell collection was permitted after four cycles. In this trial, we observed a significant increase in MRD negativity rate with no new safety concerns when using Dara-KRd compared with KRd. This provides more options for patients.

I also wanted to highlight a third trial here, MAGNETISM-6 Part 1, which includes Elrexfio (elranatamab-bcmm) in combination with Darzalex and Revlimid in newly diagnosed myeloma patients who are not eligible for transplant. The results are promising in this study as well.

Moving on to the relapsed/refractory myeloma setting, we had long-term data from the CARTITUDE-1 trial, with more than five years of follow-up. This is truly exciting and has energized the community. Relapsed/refractory myeloma is a very difficult-to-treat population; most patients in this trial had received up to six lines of therapy, and we know the prognosis is typically very poor for such patients. However, with CARTITUDE-1, we see that with Carvykti (ciltacabtagene autoleucel; cilta-cel) at five years, one-third of the patients are still alive, which is quite remarkable and exciting.

Other notable reports include the IRMA trial, which reported on giving Sarclisa (isatuximab-irfc) in a different way, using an on-body injector. This is also great for patients. The trial compared subcutaneous Sarclisa via an on-body delivery system versus the traditional intravenous (IV) form of Sarclisa, both given with Pomalyst (pomalidomide) and dexamethasone (Pd) in the relapsed/refractory myeloma setting. This was a non-inferiority trial, and we saw fewer infusion reactions and higher patient satisfaction. This approach has the potential to increase practice efficiency and is likely to be adopted in clinical practice.

We also have the first-in-human study of JNJ-5322, a novel trispecific antibody in patients with relapsed/refractory myeloma. This Phase I trial is also looking promising, something to watch out for in the future.

Moving on, I'll talk about lymphoma, focusing on the CAR T and cell therapy aspects. The phase 1 study, KITE-363, which is a bicistronic CD19-directed CAR T-cell therapy, was presented. It showed a good safety and efficacy profile, and we hope this mechanism, and this drug, might emerge in the future to improve outcomes with our currently available CAR T therapies. We also have pretty interesting data on multi-virus specific T cells to enhance the activity of bispecific antibodies. Here, we looked at bispecific antibodies, which currently have the advantage over CAR T of being "off-the-shelf." However, their clinical activity relies on T-cell function. The addition of multi-virus specific T cells is supposed to have increased cytotoxicity and the ability to reach tissue, essentially working synergistically with the bispecifics to increase efficacy.

Those are the main abstracts of interest. There's just one other thing to highlight: there were two abstracts presented, one as a poster from the VA (Veterans Affairs), which showed that CAR T-cell therapy is still not utilized as much as we'd like in eligible patients. It seemed that referral for CAR T was the main barrier to these patients receiving the therapy. Another poster, which I co-authored, looked at optimizing the duration of monitoring for CAR T patients. It suggested that instead of keeping patients for four weeks post-infusion, they could be kept for just two weeks, since most toxicities occur within two weeks. This could be practice-changing in terms of increasing access as well.

Sabari: Thank you, Dr. Ahmed. That was a beautiful and exhaustive list of different abstracts presented at ASCO 2025. It's great to hear that the number of therapies being developed and approved for our patients with hematologic malignancies. Thank you for joining us and thank you for imparting your wisdom on our CURE readership. It is a pleasure to meet you.

Ahmed: All right, thank you. Bye bye.

Transcript has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

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