Rising Unmet Need in Multiple Myeloma Management After First-Line Treatment With DRd: Expected Epidemiological...

In Italy, newly diagnosed Multiple Myeloma (MM) patients not eligible for autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT) recently benefitted from a therapeutic advancement with the reimbursement of the combination daratumumab plus lenalidomide and dexamethasone (DRd) as frontline treatment. The introduction of this combination in first-line (1 L) is expected to generate an unmet medical need in second-line (2 L), since there are only three 2 L therapeutic options recommended by ESMO guidelines and reimbursed in Italy for lenalidomide-refractory patients post-DRd.

An epidemiological model was developed to estimate the number of Italian patients progressing to 2 L therapy after receiving DRd in 1 L over a 3-year time horizon (2025-2027) following a three-step procedure: (1) identification of the cohort of patients starting 1 L therapy with DRd in each quarterly cycle; (2) estimation of the number of patients experiencing disease progression or death in each cycle, through the long-term extrapolation of the progression-free survival (PFS) curve from the DRd clinical trial; (3) calculation of the number of patients eligible for 2 L therapy in each cycle.

The cumulative number of ASCT-ineligible MM patients in 2 L after receiving DRd in 1 L in Italy amounts to 1743 between 2025 and 2027.

This study highlights the increasingly urgent unmet medical need developing in the 2 L setting following DRd in Italy, due to the large number of patients relapsing after 1 L therapy with DRd, for whom available treatment options are limited as they might not be eligible for DRd, thus intensifying their disease burden.