The Food and Drug Administration on Monday approved a new CAR-T therapy for multiple myeloma, a move that could ease strain on limited supplies of potentially lifesaving cancer therapies.
The treatment, called cilta-cel and developed by Janssen and Legend Biotech, involves taking immune cells from a patient’s own body and engineering them in a lab to fight a patient’s cancer. Since the first such treatment for multiple myeloma was approved last year, manufacturing challenges have severely hamstrung supply — leaving eligible patients waiting for weeks or months to receive the engineered cells.