Greetings to everyone as the days draw in. We are intending to generate some heat with various planned activities over the next month. There has been considerable media attention around Pharmac and the issue of delays and lack of drug funding of novel medicines in relation to solid cancers such as breast cancer and other...Continue Reading
Bone disease is the most frequent feature of multiple myeloma (MM) and represents a marker of end-organ damage; it is used to establish the diagnosis and to dictate the immediate need for therapy. For this reason, imaging plays a significant role in the management of MM patients. Although conventional radiography has traditionally been the standard...Continue Reading
Lenalidomide maintenance versus observation for patients with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma (Myeloma XI): a multicentre, open-label, randomised, phase 3 trial. Background Patients with multiple myeloma treated with lenalidomide maintenance therapy have improved progression-free survival, primarily following autologous stem-cell transplantation. A beneficial effect of lenalidomide maintenance therapy on overall survival in this setting has been inconsistent...Continue Reading
Despite data suggesting that individuals with multiple myeloma can benefit from receiving several lines of therapy, and guidelines recommending treatment after relapse, a recent European patient chart review found that only 61% of patients receive second-line treatment. The review found that factors such as old age and previous adverse events lead to physicians deciding not...Continue Reading
Analysis of thousands of individual cells in multiple myeloma patients allows for a much more precise diagnosis — distinguishing asymptomatic, early-stage patients from those with full-blown disease — and may guide treatment choices toward a more personalized approach, a study shows. The study, “Single cell dissection of plasma cell heterogeneity in symptomatic and asymptomatic myeloma,” was published...Continue Reading
Orally administered lenalidomide, a second-generation antimyeloma thalidomide analog, is a workhorse in contemporary management of multiple myeloma: it is approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the posttransplantation treatment of newly diagnosed multiple myeloma and for postinduction maintenance therapy for patients who are not eligible for autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT).1,2 Recently, reported findings...Continue Reading
As new treatments for multiple myeloma have extended patient survival—from an average of three years to more than 10 in some cases—physicians and researchers face a new challenge: how to predict a drug’s long-term effectiveness? How to tell, early on, whether one drug is likely to extend patients’ lives more than another? At Dana-Farber’s Jerome Lipper Multiple Myeloma...Continue Reading
Multiple myeloma (MM) and monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS), a precursor to MM, are 2 to 3 times more common in African Americans than European Americans, representing one of the largest racial disparities of all cancer types. According to the results of a study published in Blood Cancer Journal, the increased incidence of MM among people...Continue Reading
Until now, myeloma patients whose cancer was resistant to commonly used treatment methods and drugs had nowhere to turn. But a Phase 2 CAR T-cell clinical trial that has just opened at The Princess Margaret could change that. This trial is looking at how effective these CAR T-cells are in patients whose cancer has been...Continue Reading
