Trial Report Plasma cell targeting with the anti-CD38 antibody daratumumab in ME/CFS -a clinical pilot study, 2025, Fluge et al

I can paste into translate
1st page

REPORTING FUNCTION LEVEL
Study ID number:……..
This form should be completed every two weeks from the start of the study until week 28 of the study, and
every four weeks for the remaining time, from weeks 32 to 52.
For each time point, we ask that you state your total function level in percentage, as you have experienced it on average during the last period (i.e. the last two or four weeks).
You compare with a completely healthy state of 100%, which corresponds to your function level
before you developed ME/CFS.
See page 2 for examples.
Time (every 2 weeks) 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 1
14
Date filled in
TOTAL FUNCTIONING LEVEL IN
PERCENT (1-100)
Time (every 2 weeks) 16 18 20 22 24 26 28
Date filled in
TOTAL FUNCTIONING LEVEL IN
PERCENT (1-100)
Time (every 4 weeks) 32 36 40 44 48 52
Date filled in
TOTAL FUNCTIONING LEVEL IN
PERCENT (1-100)
Self-reported



—2nd page

Total functional level” (0-100%). Examples of percentages.
-A patient who is almost completely at rest in bed or on the couch all day, and who needs help with most simple tasks (dressing, grooming, eating), will have a functional level that is < 5% of a completely healthy state.
Here, a functional level of 1-2% would describe a patient who cannot eat by himself and is completely in need of care. Communication with helpers is difficult.
A functional level of 4-5% suggests that the patient can eat by himself, but needs help with preparation/serving. The patient can easily carry out simple tasks in personal care, such as dental care and toilet visits.
-A patient who is almost completely at rest in bed or on the couch most of the day, and only barely walks a little inside, and perhaps just outside the house, will probably have a functional level before treatment that is between 5 and 10% of a completely healthy state.
A patient with a 6% functional level can move between the bedroom and bathroom self.
A patient with an 8% functional level can shower once or twice a week, possibly with assistance/assistive devices.
A patient with a 10% functional level can prepare a simple meal and is self-reliant in personal care and dressing.
-A patient who is mostly at rest, but can be somewhat active during parts of the day, and perhaps a couple of times a week can barely go shopping or do simple short tasks, usually has a functional level that is 10-15% of a completely healthy state.
-A patient who is somewhat active, or can go for a few walks and be socially somewhat active may have a functional level that is between 20 and 25% of a completely healthy state.
-A patient who can be somewhat active with, for example, studies, hobbies, or work tasks one or two days per week, and goes for light to moderate walks without major problems may have a functional level that is approximately 40% of a completely healthy state.
-A patient who is socially active with family most days, who can go on vacation, go for walks, perhaps study, read or work with computers part of the day, may have a functional level that is 60-70% of completely healthy.
-A patient who has slight limitations in physical and social functional level, but otherwise in principle can perform activity almost as in a healthy state (but at a lower amount/duration/pace), can be perceived as having a total functional level of 80-90% of a healthy state.
-Someone who does not notice any ME symptoms and feels completely healthy will thus register 90-100%.
You must try to find what you think is approximately the correct percentage for the "total functional level", compared to a completely healthy state (100%), both before starting, and when registering during the study.
You only compare with yourself further in the study.
 
@Jaybee00 the auto translate looks fairly accurate based on skimming it.

Some of the adverbs are off, e.g. there is no mention of «can easily» for 4-5 % - it says something like «could very well» be done as in «it’s likely that they can do that», not that it can be done easily.
 
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Summary:
  • Moderate to severe
  • Housebound and partially bedbound
  • Needed a wheelchair on occasions
  • Experienced gradual improvement
  • Could return aids
  • Can go on hikes with dog, ride MC and spend time with family
  • Exercise is what caused her to need a wheelchair
  • Can now exercise without any ill effects
  • Has returned to work as a midwife
  • Experienced enormous improvement and got her life back
My own comment:
I think the general advertisements for the trials have gone too far about claiming that the treatment caused the improvement. We do not know that yet without a controlled trial, even though the results from the pilot are promising.
 
My own comment:
I think the general advertisements for the trials have gone too far about claiming that the treatment caused the improvement. We do not know that yet without a controlled trial, even though the results from the pilot are promising.
Yes, we’ve been here before with Rituximab. It’s good news if pilot studies seems promising, but we must be extremely cautious about getting hopes up before we have reliable data from a double-blind randomised controlled trial.
 
Yes, we’ve been here before with Rituximab. It’s good news if pilot studies seems promising, but we must be extremely cautious about getting hopes up before we have reliable data from a double-blind randomised controlled trial.
At least here we are finally potentially understanding more why it might not work in some people instead of having no clue in RituxME and then throwing hands up in the air and saying ME isn't B-cell mediated, where here insufficient NK cells are needed for dara plasma cell depletion, and we need to exclude those without >125 cell/ul threshold NK in any p2 dbrct
 
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At least here we are finally potentially understanding more why it might not work in some people instead of having no clue in RituxME and then throwing hands up in the air and saying ME isn't B-cell mediated, where here insufficient NK cells which are needed for dara plasma cell depletion, and we need to exclude those without >250 cell/ul threshold NK in any p2 dbrct
Strictly speaking we do not know if NK cells are relevant for the response (if there is a response), or how they would be relevant.
 
Strictly speaking we do not know if NK cells are relevant for the response (if there is a response), or how they would be relevant.
It is well known that NK cells are needed for plasma cell depletion of dara, separate from this trial or ME, and we have the clear correlation between response and NK cells/ul found in this p1 study. It's a start and actually a really crucial potential finding when moving forward to any p2 study as an inclusion criteria, otherwise as they've shown so far a dara dbrct would eventually fail like RituxME and no one would know why
 
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It is well known that NK cells are needed for plasma cell depletion of dara,
We don’t know if the plasma cell depletion is the relevant part of how Dara works if it works.
separate from this trial or ME, and we have the clear correlation between response and NK cells/ul found in this p1 study.
Yes, correlation. Not causation yet. Natural NK cell count might be a proxy for some other relevant mechanism.
It's a start and actually a really crucial potential finding when moving forward to any p2 study as an inclusion criteria, otherwise as they've shown so far a dara dbrct would eventually fail like RituxME and no one would know why
I agree that it makes sense to use NK cell count as a inclusion criteria based on the pilot data, but we still don’t know if it’s going to be relevant for the response.

My point here is that there is too much uncertainty and we need to not jump to conclusions.
 
Apart from the official phase 2 trial, they are testing dara on additional patients. This is from an updated protocol where everything is unblinded.

TLDR: 4 LC ME/CFS patients and 1 relapsed patient from the pilot study received a single dose of dara. Their symptoms improved for 1-4 months and F/M concluded that more doses are needed. They expect patients from the pilot trial to relapse who will then be retreated.

Protocol ver. 1.7: According to the reduced dosing schedule outlined in protocol ver. 1.6, group 3 received one single daratumumab subcutaneous injection at week 0, with the option for an added injection at 10 weeks. Further injections are planned at week 24 and week 48 subject to clinical response.

The following summary concerns this patient group (group 3, N=4+1). Four patients with ME/CFS after initial Covid-19 infection (long Covid) all experienced signs of clinical improvement starting at 2 to 4 weeks after a single injection. Of these patients, one reported moderate symptom improvement for 8 weeks after injection, followed by an increase in symptoms. Another had steadily improving symptoms until week 14, then reached a plateau for some weeks, followed by signs of worsening with increasing symptoms. The third experienced a gradual moderate improvement until week 19, followed by a plateau and some subsequent symptom increase. The fourth patient also reported a gradual improvement in symptoms and function level, but her progress was somewhat hampered by two successive upper airways infections.

Also, the ME/CFS patient who had suffered a partial relapse from 26 months after start of first intervention, was given one single daratumumab injection. She experienced a similar clinical course for improvement of symptoms and a similar reduction of IgG until week 14, when compared to the data from her initial four injections in the autumn 2022. However, while she went on to experience a long-lasting improvement following the four initial injections in 2022, she experienced a new partial relapse of ME/CFS symptoms starting from week 14 after the single injection in retreatment.

After clinical assessment, two of the four patients with ME/CFS after Covid-19, and the one patient with retreatment, all with signs of inadequate efficacy after one injection, received the optional second injection. Due to the heterogenous timing of symptom relapse, the added injection was administered at 10, 14 and 17 weeks, respectively. Presently, four of five patients have also received the planned injection at week 24.

Our conclusion, based on the clinical response data and reductions in serum immunoglobulins, is that a single initial Darzalex injection is probably insufficient, and this may also be the case for maintenance treatment.

Therefore we have made the following adjustments to the treatment regimens in protocol ver. 1.7: For already included patients in group 3, we have added an optional injection in the time interval weeks 30-38, subject to clinical assessment.

For new patients with severe illness (group 4) or retreatment (group 5) we will administer three initial injections at weeks 0, 2 and 4 and, subject to clinical response, two further injections at weeks 24 and 26. This dosing regimen is identical to the ongoing ResetME trial (EU CT 2024520094-13-00).

The data from the review article summarizing experiences from daratumumab in different autoimmune diseases refractory to other immunosuppressants (as discussed in the Background section), showed a median number of four Darzalex infusions/injections (range 1-24), with no clear association between the number of injections/infusions and clinical remission, which was detected in 81% of patients (52). However, this article did not describe in detail the duration of responses in those autoimmune diseases.
 
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Scheibenbogen posted this today — a summary of the 2nd International Conference on Clinical and Scientific Advances in ME/CFS and Long COVID in Portugal.
The text also mentions daratumumab.
She seems quite convinced that autoimmunity plays a major role.
 
My point here is that there is too much uncertainty and we need to not jump to conclusions.

Yep. Not least because if it turns out not to work for most people it'll be very difficult for those who're severely ill.

We should think about people who're struggling before getting too carried away with N=1 results. Some of our members are only just hanging on, we don't want to risk making things worse for them.
 
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