Bristol Myers' Blood Cancer Cell Therapy Succeeds in Mid-stage Trial

Sept 8 (Reuters) - Bristol Myers Squibb said on Tuesday its experimental cell therapy showed a high overall response ⁠rate in a mid-stage trial, in patients with a hard-to-treat form of blood cancer. The study evaluated the ⁠therapy, called arlocabtagene autoleucel, or arlo-cel, in patients with advanced multiple myeloma who had ⁠already tried four major classes ‌of standard treatments without lasting success. Bristol Myers said the trial met its main goal by showing a meaningful improvement in the overall response rate among patients who had exhausted standard therapies. It also met a key secondary goal, completely ‌clearing detectable signs of the cancer in some patients. While the ​drugmaker did ‌not release specific numerical data, it ‌said the results were statistically significant and clinically meaningful and that full findings will be ⁠presented at an upcoming medical meeting. SUGGESTED FOR YOU Arlo-cel is a ‌CAR-T cell therapy administered ⁠as a single infusion. ​The personalized treatment works by extracting ‌a patient's own immune cells, modifying them in a laboratory to target a specific protein on cancer cells called GPRC5D and infusing them back ​into the body to attack the disease. The therapy's ‌safety ‌profile was consistent with expectations and in line with other CAR-T and GPRC5D-targeting ‌therapies, the company said. Multiple ​myeloma is a cancer that forms in plasma cells, a type of white blood cell. An estimated 36,000 new cases and nearly 11,000 ⁠deaths from the disease are expected in the United ‌States this year, according to the American Cancer Society. (Reporting by Kamal Choudhury ​in Bengaluru; Editing by Pooja Desai)