International Myeloma Society (IMS) Annual Meeting 2026

Five-Year Follow-Up Finds Half of Early-Relapse Myeloma Patients Remained Progression-Free After One Carvykti Infusion

Long-term follow-up from a small Phase 2 study suggests that a single infusion of Carvykti (ciltacabtagene autoleucel) may keep some patients with early relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma free from progression for at least five years without ongoing maintenance therapy.

What CARTITUDE-2 Cohort A Studied

CARTITUDE-2 is an ongoing, multi-cohort Phase 2 trial evaluating ciltacabtagene autoleucel, also known as cilta-cel, in several multiple myeloma settings. The initial cohort A subgroup included 20 people with relapsed or refractory disease who had received between one and three earlier treatment regimens.

All participants had prior exposure to a proteasome inhibitor and their disease had stopped responding to lenalidomide. This is an important clinical population because patients whose cancer becomes refractory to lenalidomide after early treatment often need a new treatment approach and may have fewer durable options.

Patients received one cilta-cel infusion and did not receive planned maintenance therapy afterward. The primary endpoint in cohort A was minimal residual disease negativity, a highly sensitive measure used to detect very small quantities of myeloma cells remaining after treatment.

Results After About Five Years

At a median follow-up of 60.7 months, half of the cohort remained alive without disease progression. The study reported a median progression-free survival of 60.5 months, meaning the midpoint of the group had gone just over five years before progression or death.

The estimated overall survival rate at five years was 69.2 percent. Median overall survival had not been reached at the data cutoff, which means that fewer than half of patients had died by the time researchers analyzed the results.

Among the three patients who underwent bone marrow testing for minimal residual disease at the five-year point, all were negative at the deepest sensitivity level measured, one myeloma cell in one million cells. That finding is encouraging, although testing was not mandatory under the protocol and was therefore available for only a small subset of the group.

Why Treatment-Free Time Matters

Multiple myeloma is typically managed as a chronic relapsing disease. Patients may move through combinations of immunomodulatory drugs, proteasome inhibitors, anti-CD38 antibodies, bispecific antibodies, CAR T-cell therapies, and other approaches as the cancer returns or stops responding.

In that context, prolonged time without treatment can be meaningful. It may reduce the cumulative burden of clinic visits, ongoing toxicities, treatment-related financial pressures, and the psychological demands of continuous therapy. A durable remission after a single treatment also preserves other therapeutic options for later use if the disease eventually returns.

Cilta-cel is a personalized CAR T-cell therapy. A patient's own T cells are collected, engineered in a laboratory to recognize B-cell maturation antigen on myeloma cells, expanded, and infused back into the patient after preparative chemotherapy. Once in the body, the engineered cells are designed to find and destroy BCMA-expressing myeloma cells.