IMS Annual Meeting New Round-up: Second Edition

The 2026 IMS Annual Meeting ended on September 26, 2026, in Glasgow. A record-setting number of in-person and virtual attendees, totaling over 4000, participated in #IMS26 and heard about the latest in myeloma research over the four-day meeting.

The cure conversation permeated nearly every session

During the IMS/IMWG Consensus Update session on Wednesday, Nikhil C. Munshi, MD, IMS Immediate Past-President, presented a consensus definition developed by IMS and the International Myeloma Working Group (IMWG) on the criteria for cure in patients with myeloma.

According to the IMS-IMWG consensus definition of cure, a patient with newly diagnosed or relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma (NDMM or RRMM, respectively) may be considered cured if the patient meets all of these criteria. The patient:

• Should have stopped all anti-myeloma treatments ≥5 years ago

• Is in complete remission by standard IMWG response criteria

•  Is minimal residual disease (MRD) negative at a sensitivity of 10⁻⁶ by next-generation sequencing (NGS) or next-generation flow (NGF)

• Has been MRD-negative for ≥5 years (sustained MRD-negativity) without any ongoing anti-myeloma therapy, regardless of prior MRD-negativity while on therapy

  • Has had ≥4 MRD assessments in the past 5 years, all of which were negative, and at least one of which was at the 5-year landmark after stopping therapy, without any MRD-positive tests within the five-year off-therapy window

•  Is MRD-negative by functional imaging, based on positron emission tomography-computed tomography (PET-CT) or diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) whole-body magnetic resonance imaging (WB-MRI)

  • With ≥1 imaging MRD-negative assessment at the beginning and one at the end of the five-year off-therapy window, without any MRD-positive imaging tests within the five-year off-therapy window

Read the IMS announcement · See the coverage in Pharmacy Times

Trial and real-world cure fraction calculations mentioned during the Abstract and Plenary sessions included:

• A relative survival-based mixed cure model applied to patients in the MajesTEC-3 trial showed a statistical cure fraction of 86.6% in patients with RRMM on teclistamab plus daratumumab therapy, compared with 0% among daratumumab-based triplet recipients; the calculation did not require a five-year off-therapy window

• A real-world analysis of MRD-adapted treatment cessation showed plateauing of relapse risk after 5 years among patients who did not have high-risk myeloma per the IMS-IMWG Consensus Genomic Staging criteria published in 2025

Abstracts from #IMS26 will be published in the next supplement of the IMS’ flagship journal, Clinical Lymphoma, Myeloma & Leukemia.

Groundbreaking research discussed during the Plenary and Abstract sessions included findings from CERVINO and EXCALIBER-RRMM, which set new standards of care:

• Primary findings from the phase 3 CERVINO trial, showed that etentamig, a novel BCMA x CD3 bispecific antibody/T-cell engager, reduced risk of death/progression by 60% in patients with triple drug class-exposed RRMM, compared to standard available treatments. Etentamig also had a “best-in-class safety profile” and the once-monthly dosing provides a convenient schedule amenable to outpatient administration, noted Peter Voorhees, MD, who shared these findings

• In the phase 3 EXCALIBER-RRMM trial, combination treatment with iberdomide, a novel CELMoD, along with daratumumab and dexamethasone improved MRD-negativity rates at any time, compared with daratumumab-bortezomib-dexamethasone in patients who had received 1 or 2 prior lines of therapy

• Seven-year follow-up data for the practice-setting phase 3 PERSEUS trial in transplant-eligible patients with NDMM showed consistent PFS benefit across prespecified patient subgroups, including those with standard-risk (hazard ratio [HR], 0.27) and high-risk cytogenetics (HR, 0.55), with daratumumab-bortezomib-lenalidomide-dexamethasone (Dara-VRd) induction/consolidation plus daratumumab-lenalidomide (Dara-R) maintenance, compared with VRd induction/consolidation plus lenalidomide maintenance

• A first-in-human trial of the novel BCMA×CD19 bispecific in vivo CAR-T therapy QI-019A showed early efficacy signals in patients with RRMM after ≥2 prior therapies; based on the absence of ≥grade 2 cytokine release syndrome (CRS), immune effector cell-associated neurotoxicity syndrome (ICANS), or severe adverse events (AEs), potential outpatient administration of this novel therapy may be possible, noted, Jia Xu, PhD student, who presented these findings

• Updated data for the phase 2 LINKER-SMM1 study showed an objective response rate (ORR) of 100%, with 100% MRD-negativity at a sensitivity of 10^–5 in patients with high-risk smoldering multiple myeloma who received fixed-duration linvoseltamab monotherapy

• In the phase 1b/2 MELT-MM trial, patients with RRMM who received treatment with  mezigdomide plus elranatamab had an objective response rate of 100%, with a stringent complete response rate of 92.3%

• An unanchored matching-adjusted indirect comparison of patient-level outcomes in the phase 2 iMMagine-1 trial of the novel BCMA D-domain–directed CAR-T anitocabtagene autoleucel (anito-cel) and the phase 1b/2 CARTITUDE-1 trial of ciltacabtagene autoleucel showed statistically similar ORRs, with a safety profile in terms of any-grade CRS, any-grade ICANS, grade 3/4 infections, and non-relapse mortality favoring anito-cel