COMy 2022 | Managing difficult to treat myeloma
Karthik Ramasamy, MBBS, MRCP, FRCPath, PhD, Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Oxford, UK, briefly discusses treatment options for myeloma patients with high-risk disease or those who relapse after therapy. Dr Ramasamy highlights the importance of clinical trials and using appropriate sequential therapy, as well as using continuous therapy in these high-risk patients in order to improve outcomes. This interview took place at the 8th World Congress on Controversies in Multiple Myeloma (COMy) 2022, held in Paris, France.
Transcript (edited for clarity)
Myeloma treatment still remains a challenge for a vast number of patients. Patients with standard risk disease who go into MRD negativity do tend to enjoy long remissions. But patients with high-risk disease and patients who remain MRD positive and do not go into deep remissions or relapse early, that continues to remain a challenge. Therefore, giving appropriate sequential therapy as well as entering patients into clinical trials and giving patients continuous therapy appears to be a way of managing these myeloma patients...
Myeloma treatment still remains a challenge for a vast number of patients. Patients with standard risk disease who go into MRD negativity do tend to enjoy long remissions. But patients with high-risk disease and patients who remain MRD positive and do not go into deep remissions or relapse early, that continues to remain a challenge. Therefore, giving appropriate sequential therapy as well as entering patients into clinical trials and giving patients continuous therapy appears to be a way of managing these myeloma patients. With regards to high-risk therapy, there are now trials reporting that continuous applications of treatment for these patients improves the outcomes for these patients. This happens by pushing more patients into MRD negativity as has been shown in the MUK nine b trial presented by Martin Kaiser and Matthew Jenner. This approach has also been shown by the CONCEPT, German study, and therefore in the UK, in the RADAR trial, we’ve now amended the study for high-risk patients to include continuous therapy. And we hope that would make a difference for these patients, these results we are waiting to see.
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