GSK's Hal Bar­ron her­alds their sec­ond pos­i­tive piv­otal for cru­cial an­ti-BC­MA ther­a­py, point­ing to a push for quick OKs in a crowd­ed field

Hal Bar­ron has his sec­ond pos­i­tive round of Phase III da­ta in hand for his an­ti-BC­MA an­ti­body drug con­ju­gate be­lan­tam­ab mafodotin (GSK2857916). And GSK’s re­search chief says the da­ta paves the way for their dri­ve in search of an FDA ap­proval for treat­ing mul­ti­ple myelo­ma.

It’s hard to over­es­ti­mate the im­por­tance of this drug for GSK, a cor­ner­stone of Bar­ron’s cam­paign to make a dra­mat­ic im­pact on the on­col­o­gy mar­ket and pro­vide some long-lost ex­cite­ment for the phar­ma gi­ant’s pipeline. They’re putting this BC­MA pro­gram at the front of that charge — look­ing to lead a host of ri­vals all aimed at the same tar­get.

We don’t know what the da­ta are yet, but DREAMM-2 falls on the heels of a promis­ing set of da­ta de­liv­ered 5 months ago for DREAMM-1. There in­ves­ti­ga­tors not­ed that com­plete re­spons­es among treat­ment-re­sis­tant pa­tients rose to 15% in the ex­tra year’s worth of da­ta to look over, with a me­di­an pro­gres­sion-free sur­vival rate of 12 months, up from 7.9 months re­port­ed ear­li­er. The me­di­an du­ra­tion of re­sponse was 14.3 months.

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