LLS provided critical funding at earliest stages and provides ongoing CAR-T funding today
June 9, 2025 – A new report is opening the possibility that multiple myeloma will become another blood cancer that we treat as a chronic disease – and that potentially can be cured. Thanks to treatment advances over the last several years, people with myeloma have a large range of treatment options and are living longer than ever before, but the disease’s eventual progression has so far been inevitable. But that may be changing.
At last week’s American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting in Chicago, scientists reported that one-third (32) of 97 patients with advanced myeloma treated as part of a late-stage clinical trial remain cancer free five years after receiving a one-time infusion with cilta-cel (Carvykti®), a CAR T-cell immunotherapy. These patients were at the end stages of this progressive, painful disease.
“All of us at LLS celebrate this wonderful news and are thrilled that a type of drug treatment we have championed from the very beginning is having such a profound effect on yet another disease,” says Lore Gruenbaum, Ph.D., LLS chief scientific officer. “But we are also asking an important question—what can we do about the patients who did not achieve these amazing results? And we’re already funding research to figure that out.”
CAR T-cell immunotherapy works by reprogramming a patient’s own T-cells, a key part of the immune system, to seek out and destroy cancer cells. More than 25 years ago, when this sounded more like science fiction than reality, LLS began its funding commitment to the scientists who laid the groundwork, developed the idea, and conducted some of the important clinical trials that led to the approved therapies we have today.
Today, with nearly 20 CAR-T approvals for a range of different blood cancers, many patients are experiencing never-before-seen results, including what might turn out to be cancer cures. Now, says Dr. Gruenbaum, it’s vital to dig deeper to understand what makes the results so dramatic in some patients, but not others.
LLS funding aims to help find next-generation CAR-T that is even safer, more effective and that can be produced more quickly (the current individualized therapies can take up to 3 months to prepare). LLS supported scientists are also looking at ways to alter underlying biological factors that limit the treatment’s effectiveness or lead to resistance.
Learn how LLS is investing in blood cancer research that will lead to scientific breakthroughs that will improve and save the lives of patients: www.lls.org/lls-research