MPN Workshop of the Carolinas 2024 | Current approaches and recommendations for physicians treating patients with MF and anemia

Well, I think the key to realize is that you’re really treating the underlying disease. That although patients can have different ways they affected: anemia, low platelets, enlarged spleen, symptoms – these are not individual things that we treat, but that we’re really trying to treat the whole disease.

So with that, for many individuals, if we can treat everything with a single drug, we would. So now that we have momelotinib which has been approved, that can help to have a direct impact on spleen, symptoms and anemia, that can be a very unifying sort of therapy for the disease. I like to tell folks that momelotinib is a myelofibrosis drug, it’s not an anemia drug, but it’s a myelofibrosis drug that can help to improve anemia.

Now there’s also benefit that can be seen with pacritinib. Pacritinib has an indication particularly for those with thrombocytopenia, but anemia benefit can also really be seen. Now combinations have also been used, particularly for individuals who are on ruxolitinib or fedratinib, erythropoetin stimulating agents, lusapatercept is in clinical trials, as well as other approaches to try to impact and improve anemia.

As we look at future combinations with BET inhibition and JAK inhibition or other combination approaches, you know, we hope again for more of a unifying sort of approach as opposed to, you know, there’s four ways that patients are affected, we use a drug to treat each. I think really unifying approaches are best.