ASCO 2016 | How can we improve our understanding of the progression of myeloma?

Irene Ghobrial, MD of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI), Boston, MA, discusses the progression of multiple myeloma (MM), which comes from precursor conditions such as monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS) and smoldering myeloma. It is not known, however, which patients will progress. Improving our understanding of the development of the disease means that we could be treating patients earlier and avoiding the progression into advanced multiple myeloma and the associated complications, such as organ damage. Current biomarkers cannot be used to predict with accuracy the progression of the disease, so we need better tools, such as next-generation sequencing (NGS) and molecular biomarkers. Dr Ghobrial describes one of DFCI’s initiatives, the Center for Prevention of Progression of Blood Cancers (CPOP), which aims to accrue patients from all around the world without them having to travel to DFCI, using a crowdsourcing platform called Pcrowd (pcrowd.dana-farber.org). Recorded at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), held in Chicago, IL.