A therapy made of immune system T cells engineered to target a somewhat enigmatic cell protein called GPRC5D antigen produced impressive results in its first clinical trial in patients with multiple myeloma, researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK), Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center report in a new study published today by the New England Journal of Medicine.

The patients were treated at MSK during the clinical trial and the CAR T cell manufacturing was performed at the institution's Cell Therapy Cell Engineering Facility (CTCEF).

"It's a novel cellular-therapy approach for multiple myeloma that, in this first small study, demonstrated a strong response rate in patients, even those who were previously treated with other CAR T calls targeted to another antigen, BCMA," says Renier Brentjens, MD, Ph.D., Deputy Director and the Katherine Anne Gioia Endowed Chair in Cancer Medicine at Roswell Park and a co-senior author on the study.

"It's a proof-of-principle study, but these results provide a rationale for not just infusing a single population of CAR T cells but using several populations that may be targeted to different proteins on the surface of the tumor cell."

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