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EHA 2026 | Revisiting melflufen in heavily pretreated multiple myeloma
Claudio Cerchione, MD, PhD, Istituto Scientifico Romagnolo per lo Studio e la Cura dei Tumori (IRST) IRCCS, Meldola, Italy, discusses the evolving role of melflufen in heavily pretreated multiple myeloma. Dr Cerchione explains how the drug’s monthly administration schedule, manageable safety profile, and limited hospital burden may benefit elderly or frail patients, as well as those awaiting newer immunotherapies such as CAR T-cell therapy or bispecific antibodies. This interview took place at the 31st Congress of the European Hematology Association (EHA) in Stockholm, Sweden.
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Transcript
Melflufen is a new concept of chemotherapy. This is, I like to say, back to the future because we, in some way, have a historical drug like Melflufen with a new formulation that permits to, in some way, sequence inside the current panorama of multiple myeloma. This is an important drug because it has a really interesting schedule, only one time every month, every 28 days, with a 30 minutes administration, without side effects during the intravenous administration of the drug, without the need to carefully, in some way, monitor the exams of the patient...
Melflufen is a new concept of chemotherapy. This is, I like to say, back to the future because we, in some way, have a historical drug like Melflufen with a new formulation that permits to, in some way, sequence inside the current panorama of multiple myeloma. This is an important drug because it has a really interesting schedule, only one time every month, every 28 days, with a 30 minutes administration, without side effects during the intravenous administration of the drug, without the need to carefully, in some way, monitor the exams of the patient. So it reduces the access to the hospital. It optimizes the timing to the hospital when you come to have the injection. In some way, I think that this is something that can be helpful for elderly population, patients with comorbidities, patients with the lack of caregivers and can balance in a very good way. The Trinity concept that we have discussed into the symposium here at EHA is the idea to balance effectiveness, tolerability and quality of life. I think that in this sense Melflufen is perfect because only one time a month with a short administration we can also use for patients that are not able to have long infusion and cannot come off to the hospital and this can be something that we can use in patients who are not eligible to new immunotherapies such as B-specific or CAR-T and moreover also for patients that in some way need to be bridged to these therapies because this is approved and reimbursed from fourth line. Some patients can have in some way a period with this drug also to be bridged to new opportunities that are available or that will be available. I had a personal real world experience really interesting with the drug and I can say that maybe in daily practice the results of OC and the registrative trial are also improved in terms of tolerability and effectiveness. In general, I think that Melflufen is positioning very well in every pretreated treatment of a current multiple myeloma.
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