Bhavesh Shah Discusses Expanding Access for BCMA Bispecific Antibody

Bhavesh Shah, RPh, BCOP, chief pharmacy officer and director of specialty and hematology/oncology pharmacy at Boston Medical Center, talks about what oncology agents in the pipeline he hopes to see become available.

Transcript

With around 1300 oncology agents in development, which ones are you most excited to see become available in the next year?

I think what I'm really excited about is the BCMA [B-cell maturation antigen] bispecific antibody. In myeloma we have, obviously, BCMA CAR T [chimeric antigen receptor t-cell therapy], which really patients haven't been able to access because there are limitations in manufacturing slots. We know that BCMA is very, very active in myeloma and there's potential for access for another agent for myeloma patients. We treat a lot of myeloma patients in our institution, and I think that really would create more access for patients, with having another BCMA, which has a unique target and doesn't have the amount of cytokine release syndrome that you would see with BCMA CAR T.

It could also expand access for patients, because you can possibly give it in the community where a patient can actually get it as an outpatient. So I think that's the most exciting part about it, where more patients will have access and there's less manufacturing constraints that providers are dealing with, where they have 300 patients waiting for a BCMA CAR T and they have 3 manufacturing slots. So really increasing access for life-saving therapy here.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.