This week's Ask Dr. Durie, comes from a patient who is concerned about the frequency of the treatment with Teclistamab, which is an anti-BCMA bispecific antibody recently approved by the FDA and now in widespread use in the United States. So the answer is that there is assessment that reducing the dose of Teclistamab, can be achieved safely. And a real-world analysis was presented at the ASCO meeting in 2024. In this particular real-world analysis, results were assessed looking at patients who stayed on the full once-a-week dose schedule compared with those who reduced to every two weeks or once a month.
The importance of this real-world analysis is that the overall response rate stayed the same as in the original MajesTEC-1 registration trial. And in this real-world analysis, the overall response rate was 62%. And so what this meant was that the dose reduction could be considered to reduce the likelihood of infections and other toxicities and to improve the quality of life of therapy without compromising the benefit. And so the bottom line here is that although further analyses are required, it seems that this reduction from the weekly to every two weeks or even once a month, can be a sensible thing to do because it retains the efficacy or benefit and gives a chance to reduce the likelihood of infections and other toxicities and improve the quality of life for treated patients. So really good news for the real-world use of Teclistamab.
Dr. Brian G.M. Durie (1942-2025) was the co-founder of the IMF. He was a Professor of Medicine, Hematologist/Oncologist, and Honoree MD at the University of Brussels.
