A new clinical trial, whose results were published in the scientific journal Nature Medicine, evaluated a new treatment strategy for multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer that develops in the plasma cells of the bone marrow, which play an important role in the immune system. The research explores how teclistamab works, an immunotherapy drug that is already used to treat this cancer in advanced stages. It is approved in the European Union and also by the FDA, the agency that classifies it as a "first-in-class breakthrough medicine." What this treatment does in the body is connect the body's T cells —a type of immune system cell— with specific proteins produced by myeloma cells. In this way, it helps the immune system identify and attack them. Multiple myeloma is a treatable disease, but it often relapses and, over time, the cancer cells can develop resistance to treatments. This is what they discovered. The drug that eliminated cancer markers in 78% of high-risk patients in a clinical trial The results of teclistamab, a drug against multiple myeloma In a first study, over 18 months, a group of patients received treatment with teclistamab. The results of the clinical trial showed that the drug kept more patients free of disease progression for a longer period, compared to those who received standard therapies. 70% of the patients treated with teclistamab showed no disease progression, compared to 27% who received conventional treatment. But the researchers also analyzed another scenario: high-risk smoldering multiple myeloma (HR-SMM). This is a stage prior to active multiple myeloma. People with this condition have an elevated risk of the disease progressing, so they must remain under medical surveillance before starting treatment. In this case, the researchers of the study published in Nature Medicine wanted to evaluate whether intervening earlier with teclistamab could help prevent or delay disease progression. To do this, they conducted a randomized phase 2 trial with 59 participants: 45 received teclistamab and 14 were treated with standard therapy, based on lenalidomide-dexamethasone. The results showed that 77.8% of the patients treated with teclistamab achieved a complete response, while this did not occur in any of the patients who received lenalidomide-dexamethasone. Furthermore, after 24.5 months of follow-up, progression-free survival was 92% among the patients who used teclistamab, compared to 49% of those who received lenalidomide-dexamethasone. The authors noted that more research is still needed to determine the role of this treatment at this stage of the disease. However, they concluded that the results of the trials support teclistamab as a "highly active immunological interception strategy" against high-risk smoldering multiple myeloma.