This story was originally published on RNZ Politicians heard emotional pleas today from cancer survivors, people with disabilities and health agencies to boost Pharmac’s funding for life saving drugs. Petitions were presented to the Health Select Committee at Parliament – calling on medicines to be funded – including for breast, lung, ovarian cancers, along with...Continue Reading
Dr Ken Romeril, chief executive, Myeloma New Zealand, is appearing today before the Health Select Committee in support of their submission asking for funding of six life-extending treatments for multiple myeloma patients. Dr Romeril said there have been huge advances in myeloma treatment internationally, but no new anti-myeloma medicines have been funded in NZ in...Continue Reading
Omar Nadeem, MD, a physician at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School, discusses individualizing therapy for patients with multiple myeloma. As more therapies become available, more thought will have to be put into determining how best to sequence agents. In the relapsed setting, that will be the most important...Continue Reading
This story was originally published on the Hematology Advisor The introduction of monoclonal antibodies and immunomodulators into earlier lines of therapy may improve progression-free survival (PFS) in patients with refractory multiple myeloma (MM), according to a study reanalyzing clinical data collected at the Winship Cancer Center at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Results were published in Cancer....Continue Reading
A new drug reduced the risk of relapse and increased survival by five months, according to a recent study. The results were presented at a cancer conference in Chicago in June. Most often found in bone marrow sites, multiple myeloma is considered a chronic disease, although several new treatment options have increased the survival rate...Continue Reading
In the past 20 years, we’ve been very fortunate in the development of effective myeloma therapies and have seen remarkable progress for our patients. Median survivals have improved from 2 to 3 years—at best—to 3 to 5 years with transplant for younger patients, and now we’re seeing median survivals in excess of 10 years, with...Continue Reading
For patients with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma, the addition of daratumumab to lenalidomide and dexamethasone is associated with a reduced risk for disease progression or death, according to a study published in the May 30 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Thierry Facon, M.D., from the University of Lille in France, and colleagues...Continue Reading
Guyon Espiner reveals how lung cancer patients are buying cut-price drugs from India, as other New Zealanders fundraise, petition and apply for clinical trials to access medications Pharmac won’t fund. This is the first story in a four-part investigation into how Pharmac works and whether its model is costing lives. The second story will be...Continue Reading
Smoldering multiple myeloma (SMM) is an asymptomatic clonal plasma cell disorder and is described as an intermediate stage between monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS) and multiple myeloma (MM). In 2003, the International Myeloma Working Group (IMWG) classified patients with SMM as those who displayed an absence of end-organ damage or the signs and symptoms of amyloidosis...Continue Reading
Lenalidomide (Revlimid) significantly reduced the risk for smoldering multiple myeloma to progress to cancer among patients with moderate to high risk, according to findings from the phase II/III E3A06 trial to be presented at the 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting. “It is pretty clear that we need to differentiate treatment of myeloma versus prevention of smoldering to developing myeloma,” Sagar...Continue Reading
