Patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma who received elotuzumab in addition to lenalidomide and dexamethasone had a longer duration of remission and higher overall response rate without a significant increase in adverse events, a study presented in an American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) presscast ahead of the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting has shown.

The phase 3 ELOQUENT-2 study, enrolled 646 patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma who had received between one and three prior treatments for their disease. Participants were randomly assigned to receive lenalidomide 25 mg orally plus dexamethasone with or without elotuzumab 10 mg/kg intravenously in repeated 28-day cycles.

Results showed that progression-free survival was 30% lower in the elotuzumab group compared with the control group (HR = 0.70; 95% CI: 0.57-0.85; P=0.0004). The findings also suggest that long-term outcomes seem to favor those treated with elotuzumab.


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In addition, the overall response rate was 79% and 66% in the elotuzumab and control groups, respectively (P=0.0002).

Elotuzumab is a novel first-in-class monoclonal antibody that targets SLAMF7 on both the tumor cells and natural killer cells of the host.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted breakthrough status to elotuzumab based on previous trials.