BSH/ISH 2016 | Recent drug approvals for the treatment of relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma

At the 2016 Annual Meeting of the British Society of Haematology (BSH) and International Society of Hematology (ISH), held in Glasgow, Scotland, Paul Richardson, MD, from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA gives an overview of his talk on the latest advances in the clinical management of relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma (MM). He discusses several drugs that have been recently approved by the FDA in the US, namely pomalidomide, carfilzomib, the HDAC inhibitor panobinostat, elotuzumab, daratumumab, and ixazomib, which is the first oral proteasome inhibitor. According to Dr Richardson, these new drugs have had a dramatic effect on clinical management due to their novel mechanisms of action. Dr Richardson further details the mechanisms of action of these drugs, such as elotuzumab and daratumumab, which target SLAMF7 and CD38 respectively, and also discusses possible drug combinations. Moreover, Dr Richardson talks about ixazomib in detail and discusses the results of the TOURMALINE-MM1 trial, which shows that ixazomib has a progression-free survival (PFS) advantage of at least 6 months and a favorable tolerability profile.