Advice for Choosing MPN Therapy: What’s Right for You?

Advice for Choosing MPN Therapy: What’s Right for You? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

MPN specialist Dr. Abdulraheem Yacoub reviews factors that determine which treatment is most appropriate for your essential thrombocythemia (ET), polycythemia vera (PV), or myelofibrosis (MF). 

Dr. Abdulraheem Yacoub is a hematologist oncologist at the University of Kansas Cancer Center. Dr. Yacoub is an active researcher and is an Associate Professor of Hematologic Malignancies and Cellular Therapeutics. Learn more about Dr. Yacoub, here.
 

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How Treatment Goals Impact MPN Treatment Decisions

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Expert Perspective: Hopeful MPN Research and Development

Expert Perspective: Hopeful MPN Research and Development


Transcript:

Katherine:

As with most conditions, all patients are different, of course, and what might work for one person might not be appropriate for another. So, how do you choose which treatment is right for a patient?   

Dr, Yacoub:

Excellent. So, and that’s actually the heart of what we define as the art of practicing medicine and being patient-centric and focused. And patients already have their own wishes and their needs. And everything should start with having a discussion with patients on what is their priority, and what are they trying to achieve.  

And we do have to explain to them the tools we have, the interventions that can help them. But we also need to make sure they’re compatible with what they actually want and their goals in life. And sometimes what we doctors want is not exactly what the patients want. So, we always have to remind ourselves that patients are the drivers of their care. And they have the absolute right to be informed and to make informed decisions based on the options we advise them about.  

So, that is always a centerpiece of healthcare. And then patients – basically, we defined four pillars of care. We want to control their symptoms, we want to prevent complications, we want to modify the disease so it doesn’t transform, and we want our therapies not to have toxicities, not to have side effects that are worse than the disease.  

So, we bring that up to the table. And we also look at the patient. What are their symptoms? What did the disease cause them to be complications?  

What is the risk that their cancer is actually going to progress quickly to hurt their lives? And how serious is the therapy we’re recommending? And we need to make sure that there is a good match between what we’re offering and what the disease is manifesting. So, for example, for patients who have a lot of symptoms, but they have low-risk cancer that they can live with for a long time, we focus on symptoms. We focus on treatments that improve their symptoms.  

While with patients who have more serious diseases that are eminently life-threatening, we focus on an expedited path to a more aggressive therapy and a bone marrow transplant.  

And then we also try to match those therapies with the other patient’s wishes and needs and so forth. So, all these factors are important. We have more tools to try to prognosticate. So, prognosticate is the medical word that we use as forecasting.  

We like to forecast the disease or the cancer. We try to predict the patient’s future. Fortunately, we actually have good tools to prognosticate now. We have models or calculators that factor in patients’ features, their symptoms, their age, their blood counts, their bone marrow findings, and their DNA mutations. And it gives us a score, a risk score that can correlate with their life expectancy or their outcomes.  

And we use those tools to guide us. So, there’s actually a tool we use to help patients reach that decision. It’s an objective tool to decide how serious is this disease and how seriously we should tackle it. It’s very applicable for patients with myelofibrosis, more sort of the other lower-risk cancers.  

Katherine:

What about comorbidities? How do they fit into the treatment plan?  

Dr. Yacoub:

Very important.  

So, again, it also goes back to finding the balance between how serious is the disease, how serious is the treatment, and how will the patient’s general health tolerate and factor in the choices patients make accordingly. So, myeloproliferative neoplasms do happen in a broad range of ages. And we have children, minors with MPNs, and we have elderly patients with MPNs. And it’s a continuous spectrum. And each individual patient will have their own health concerns and their own health comorbidities and their own wishes. And we always have to make sure that we match our therapies, the disease seriousness, and the patient’s wishes, which is also stemming from their own other health battles, too.  

We cannot turn a blind eye to the other health issues going on. That plays a major factor as we choose to discuss bone marrow transplantation with patients. Because that’s when the medical comorbidities are often the first barrier to go through.  

Katherine:

Are there specific biomarkers that may affect prognosis or treatment?  

Dr. Yacoub:

Yes. So, and we’re glad that actually myeloproliferative neoplasms are actually the model in medical oncology on how predictors can tell us a lot more about the patient’s future about the prognosis. So, early on in MPNs, we’ve developed models, like the International Prognostic Scoring Systems in many different iterations. And more recently, the Molecular Based International Prognostic Scores.  

They factor in patient’s age, they factor in blood numbers, they factor in DNA abnormalities, they also factor in DNA mutations, including the common driver mutations JAK2 and CALR and MPL, as well as more novel mutations that we call higher risk mutations.  

So, based on these models, we use these tools to predict how the cancer will behave, and how to approach it. This advancement has been an application for our MPN patients for a while, way ahead of all other fields of oncology. So, we’re proud that we can give our patients this tool before all other doctors were able to. Yeah.   

What Are Treatment Options for Myelofibrosis?

What Are Treatment Options for Myelofibrosis? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

MPN specialist Dr. Abdulraheem Yacoub shares and overview of treatment options, including therapies in development, for patients living with myelofibrosis (MF).

Dr. Abdulraheem Yacoub is a hematologist oncologist at the University of Kansas Cancer Center. Dr. Yacoub is an active researcher and is an Associate Professor of Hematologic Malignancies and Cellular Therapeutics. Learn more about Dr. Yacoub, here.

 
 

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How Treatment Goals Impact MPN Treatment Decisions

How Treatment Goals Impact MPN Treatment Decisions

Advice for Choosing MPN Therapy: What’s Right for You?

Advice for Choosing MPN Therapy: What’s Right for You?

How Should You Participate in MPN Care and Treatment Decisions?

How Should You Participate in MPN Care and Treatment Decisions?


Transcript:

Katherine:

And since myelofibrosis is a progressive condition, I imagine it’s more difficult to manage. So, what else is available for patients with myelofibrosis?  

Dr. Yacoub:

Correct So, myelofibrosis is the higher end of this spectrum of cancers.  

It is a cancer that is associated with much higher symptom burden and impact on daily life. It is also associated with low blood counts, and some patients will require transfusions. It’s a major morbidity to our patients. And in addition, it’s a cancer that is associated with shortened life. So, patients with myelofibrosis will not live as long as their health would have allowed them. And some of them will live actually a much shorter life than they want or deserve.  

So, myelofibrosis treatment requires a lot more considerations. So, for patients who are in good health, who have a cancer that is more aggressive, that would be imminently impacting their longevity, we start a discussion about a curative role of allogeneic stem cell transplantation very early in their course.  

Because bone marrow transplantation can be curative, and those patients can live a long life after a successful transplant. So, this is a treatment modality that should be brought up very early for patients with higher risk myelofibrosis. There are approved JAK inhibitors, ruxolitinib (Jakafi) and fedratinib (Inrebic). And we know that ruxolitinib which has been approved for over 10 years can improve symptoms, can improve the spleen volume, can actually prolong lives for patients on it, and also makes the transplant more successful.  

So, we should be offering that to the appropriate patients also early in their diagnosis, in a strategy where, in addition to that, we get them to a transplant. Fedratinib is approved in that setting. And we are very optimistic that by the end of this calendar year, we will have two other JAK inhibitors approved.  

[Editor’s Note: As of February 28, 2022, pacritinib (Vonjo) has been approved for the treatment of myelofibrosis patients with severe thrombocytopenia.] 

So, we look forward to those two drugs. Momelotinib and pacritinib for patients with special disease features. And hopefully, by the end of this year, we will have a list of JAK inhibitors that we can choose from, which is great news for our patients.  

Katherine:

Oh, we’re still fighting. 

Dr. Yacoub:

Yes, absolutely.  

What Are Treatment Options for Polycythemia Vera?

What Are Treatment Options for Polycythemia Vera? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

MPN specialist Dr. Abdulraheem Yacoub provides an overview of available treatment options for patients living with polycythemia vera (PV). 

Dr. Abdulraheem Yacoub is a hematologist oncologist at the University of Kansas Cancer Center. Dr. Yacoub is an active researcher and is an Associate Professor of Hematologic Malignancies and Cellular Therapeutics. Learn more about Dr. Yacoub, here.
 
 

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How Treatment Goals Impact MPN Treatment Decisions

How Treatment Goals Impact MPN Treatment Decisions

Advice for Choosing MPN Therapy: What’s Right for You?

Advice for Choosing MPN Therapy: What’s Right for You?

How Should You Participate in MPN Care and Treatment Decisions?

How Should You Participate in MPN Care and Treatment Decisions?


Transcript:

Katherine:

You mentioned using interferons for ET. That’s something that you would also use for polycythemia vera. Yes?   

Dr. Yacoub:

Absolutely. So, the same principles will apply to polycythemia vera. We would like to treat the higher-risk patients more aggressively. Hydroxyurea (Hydrea) and interferon are also the first-line therapies in these patients.   

The good news in 2022 is that we actually finally have an FDA-approved interferon for our patients. Finally, after 50 years of using interferon, now, we have an FDA approval. So, the new interferon, ropeginterferon alfa-2b is a medication that was studied prospectively in Europe, and it has been approved and in clinical use in Europe under the brand name Besremi.  

And this year, it was approved in the U.S. for patients with polycythemia vera, which is a great achievement for the medical field and a great tool to help our patients. We have used other brands off-label in the past, but it’s glad now to get this confirmation from the FDA that this is a standard of care for all patients.  

And then beyond that, ruxolitinib or Jakafi, is also approved as a second-line option in patients who have had hydroxyurea as their first line.  

So, these are the medicines we use for polycythemia vera. We also use therapeutic phlebotomy. And the goal in high-risk polycythemia vera, or actually in all patient polycythemia vera, is to reduce their hematocrit.  

And we want it under 45 percent every day of the year. And we use the tools that we just discussed phlebotomy and medicines to achieve that, in addition to aspirin. So, that’s how PV is more unique than ET. Yes. 

What Are Treatment Options for Essential Thrombocythemia?

What Are Treatment Options for Essential Thrombocythemia? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

MPN specialist Dr. Abdulraheem Yacoub reviews the various treatment approaches available to patients living with essential thrombocythmia (ET).

Dr. Abdulraheem Yacoub is a hematologist oncologist at the University of Kansas Cancer Center. Dr. Yacoub is an active researcher and is an Associate Professor of Hematologic Malignancies and Cellular Therapeutics. Learn more about Dr. Yacoub, here.
 
 

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How Treatment Goals Impact MPN Treatment Decisions

How Treatment Goals Impact MPN Treatment Decisions

Advice for Choosing MPN Therapy: What’s Right for You?

Advice for Choosing MPN Therapy: What’s Right for You?

How Should You Participate in MPN Care and Treatment Decisions?

How Should You Participate in MPN Care and Treatment Decisions?


Transcript:

Dr: Yacoub: 

So, let’s talk about essential thrombocythemia. This is among the other MPNs, the cancer with the lowest risk. Patients with essential thrombocythemia can have clots and can have bleedings. And they also often have symptoms because of their cancer.  

But they also enjoy a long life expectancy that is almost indifferent from patients who don’t have cancer provided they get good care. So, our emphasis is on focusing that their life quality is not touched by their cancer, and focusing on treating patients with symptoms, to ameliorate the symptoms and allowing them to have a decent and good quality of life. At the same time, we would like to reduce the risk of clotting and bleeding.  

And we have tools and medicines that are very effective at doing that in select patients who we define as high risk. And now there is a more clear definition of that. So, high-risk patients are patients who are over age 60 and have a JAK2 mutation, or patients who have already had a clot.  

That is not the majority of ET patients actually. The majority are not high risk. And those patients might not require therapy to reduce their platelet count. 

But for high-risk patients, we have tools to help them. So, hydroxyurea (Hydrea) is the most commonly used medicine in this setting.  

The goal of hydroxyurea is to reduce the platelet count. And we’d like to keep it under 400, sometimes under 600 under different circumstances. And that will reduce the risk of clotting and bleeding for our patients. The other option, which I also feel passionate about is interferon.  

Interferons are drugs that we’ve used for decades. They’re very effective. They’re safe in the right hands. And they do have advantages over hydroxyurea in terms of long-term safety. These are medications we can give to young patients, we can give to pregnant patients, we can give for long term without concerns of toxicity, and also they have a higher ceiling. Patients with interferon can achieve a disease control that we cannot achieve with hydroxyurea.  

And this will be beneficial long term treating those patients. So, these – yeah, and then aspirin therapy is always something we would like to include in this regimen.  

Katherine:

I was going to ask you about that. So, aspirin is still being used as a treatment?  

 Dr. Yacoub:

Absolutely. So, the standard of care is to use aspirin. Usually, one baby aspirin once a day, preferably in the morning is what we recommend. And that’s probably all the aspirin they need. We do not want them to take more than that either.  

How Treatment Goals Impact MPN Treatment Decisions

How Treatment Goals Impact MPN Treatment Decisions from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Dr. Abdulraheem Yacoub, an MPN specialist, reviews treatment goals for patients with essential thrombocythemia (ET), polycthemia vera (PV), and myelofibrosis (MF). Dr. Yacoub goes on to explain factors that may impact treatment decisions, including the management of symptoms and side effects. 

Dr. Abdulraheem Yacoub is a hematologist oncologist at the University of Kansas Cancer Center. Dr. Yacoub is an active researcher and is an Associate Professor of Hematologic Malignancies and Cellular Therapeutics. Learn more about Dr. Yacoub, here.
 

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What Are Treatment Options for Essential Thrombocythemia?

What Are Treatment Options for Essential Thrombocythemia?

What Are Treatment Options for Polycythemia Vera?

What Are Treatment Options for Polycythemia Vera?

What Are Treatment Options for Myelofibrosis?

What Are Treatment Options for Myelofibrosis?


Transcript:

Katherine:

To give our patient audience some context before we get into the specifics of MPN treatment approaches, how would you define treatment goals?  

Dr. Yacoub:

Thank you, thank you. And I always like to highlight and emphasize that unlike many of the cancer syndromes that patients deal with, myeloproliferative neoplasms are unique. 

These are chronic cancers. There’s no finish line. And this is a disease you live with. It affects every day of your life, every activity of your future life. You plan your life events accordingly. Pregnancies and marriages and trips and all of that. So, this is a chronic cancer. And as we plan therapy, we always factor that in. We would like the cancer to have the least or almost no impact on your daily life.  

Whether it’s symptoms, whether it’s disability and dysfunction and inability to perform your daily functions, whether it’s actual physical symptoms that you’re having from the cancer, or whether it’s affecting complications that are hurting your health. So, we would like to focus on all of these, the medical aspect as well as the impact of the disease to everyday symptoms.  

This is a unique feature of these cancers. And it doesn’t really exist much in other diseases.  

So, as we approach our patients, we would like to get a good assessment of the disease burden to their lives. These can be symptoms. So, we actually have very good objective tools to measure symptoms, such as the MPN-SAF. It’s an objective tool to calculate the symptoms. So, we would like to get an objective baseline of symptoms. 

Because we do want to address the symptoms, regardless of the MPN subtype. We do want to master actually the symptoms because that is what patients feel every day, and we want to affect that early in the treatment. We also would like to get a good assessment of the disease complications. Have the patient suffered a clot or a hemorrhage or symptoms because of an enlarged spleen? Or were they unable to perform certain activities? Are they able to eat? Are they losing weight?  

So, we would like to see how is the cancer also causing them immediate morbidity, and we also would like to tackle the future. So, cancers tend to get worse with time. They tend to transform into a higher risk cancer. So, as we approach any of the MPN patients, we also talk about the future risk of the cancer turning into a more aggressive form of cancer.  

So, we would like if we can, for every patient to focus on these three pillars of their care: their immediate quality of life and symptoms, their immediate complications, and their future disease progression.  

And we would like to factor in that our treatments does not add more side effects to their lives. So, that’s the fourth pillar of how we take care of patients. So, these are the basic concepts that will apply today for all patients with all three diseases.  

Some patients will have more emphasis on one or the other. But this is something in our mind as doctors who treat MPN patients.  

Thriving with an MPN: What You Should Know About Care and Treatment

Thriving with an MPN: What You Should Know About Care and Treatment from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

 MPN specialist and researcher, Dr. Abdulraheem Yacoub, reviews factors that help guide care decisions for MPNs – essential thrombocythemia (ET), polycythemia vera (PV), and myelofibrosis (MF). Dr. Yaboub discusses the goals of treatment, shares tools for taking an active role in your care, and provides an update on promising new therapies for MPNs.

 
Dr. Abdulraheem Yacoub is a hematologist oncologist at the University of Kansas Cancer Center. Dr. Yacoub is an active researcher and is an Associate Professor of Hematologic Malignancies and Cellular Therapeutics. Learn more about Dr. Yacoub, here.
 
 

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The Latest in MPN Research: Updates from ASH 2021

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Updates from ASH: How Biomarker Testing Has Changed MPN Care

Expert Advice for Finding an MPN Clinical Trial

Expert Advice for Finding an MPN Clinical Trial


Transcript:

Katherine:                  

Hello, and welcome. I’m Katherine Banwell, your host for today. Today’s program is about how to live and thrive with an MPN. We’re going to discuss MPN treatment goals, and how you can play an active role in your care.

Before we get into the discussion, please remember that this program is not a substitute for seeking medical advice. Please refer to your healthcare team about what might be best for you.

All right, let’s meet our guest. Joining me today is Dr. Abdulraheem Yacoub. Welcome, Dr. Yacoub. Would you please introduce yourself?

Dr. Yacoub:               

Hello, Katherine. And thank you very much for inviting me to participate in this very important and near and dear topic to my heart and to everything I do every day.

I’m a hematologist-oncologist at the University of Kansas. I practice hematology 100 percent of my time, and I dedicate it to patients with MPNs. I’m an active researcher through clinical trials at my own institution, as well as part of many national and international collaborations. We all strive to provide the best care and the updates for our patients. I’m also a Director of our hematology clinics in cancers at the University of Kansas, and I’m an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Kansas.

Katherine:                  

Well, thank you so much for taking time out of your very busy schedule to join us today. We appreciate it.

Dr. Yacoub:               

Absolutely, my pleasure.

Katherine:                  

To give our patient audience some context before we get into the specifics of MPN treatment approaches, how would you define treatment goals?

Dr. Yacoub:               

Thank you, thank you. And I always like to highlight and emphasize that unlike many of the cancer syndromes that patients deal with, myeloproliferative neoplasms are unique.

These are chronic cancers. There’s no finish line. And this is a disease you live with. It affects every day of your life, every activity of your future life. You plan your life events accordingly. Pregnancies and marriages and trips and all of that. So, this is a chronic cancer. And as we plan therapy, we always factor that in. We would like the cancer to have the least or almost no impact on your daily life.

Whether it’s symptoms, whether it’s disability and dysfunction and inability to perform your daily functions, whether it’s actual physical symptoms that you’re having from the cancer, or whether it’s affecting complications that are hurting your health. So, we would like to focus on all of these, the medical aspect as well as the impact of the disease to everyday symptoms.

This is a unique feature of these cancers. And it doesn’t really exist much in other diseases.

Katherine:                  

That’s helpful to understand as we move through today’s program. And we’re going to cover the three classic MPNs, polycythemia vera, essential thrombocythemia, and myelofibrosis.

So, for the person who has one of these conditions, can you help us understand the treatment approaches for each? Let’s start with essential thrombocythemia or ET.

Dr. Yacoub:               

Excellent. So, I’m going to start with some general concepts. So, as we approach our patients, we would like to get a good assessment of the disease burden to their lives. These can be symptoms. So, we actually have very good objective tools to measure symptoms, such as the MPN-SAF. It’s an objective tool to calculate the symptoms. So, we would like to get an objective baseline of symptoms.

Because we do want to address the symptoms, regardless of the MPN subtype. We do want to master actually the symptoms because that is what patients feel every day and we want to affect that early in the treatment. We also would like to get a good assessment of the disease complications. Have the patient suffered a clot or a hemorrhage or symptoms because of an enlarged spleen? Or were they unable to perform certain activities? Are they able to eat? Are they losing weight?

So, we would like to see how is the cancer also causing them immediate morbidity, and we also would like to tackle the future. So, cancers tend to get worse with time. They tend to transform into a higher risk cancer. So, as we approach any of the MPN patients, we also talk about the future risk of the cancer turning into a more aggressive form of cancer.

So, we would like if we can, for every patient to focus on these three pillars of their care: their immediate quality of life and symptoms, their immediate complications, and their future disease progression.

And we would like to factor in that our treatments does not add more side effects to their lives. So, that’s the fourth pillar of how we take care of patients. So, these are the basic concepts that will apply today for all patients with all three diseases.

Some patients will have more emphasis on one or the other. But this is something in our mind as doctors who treat MPN patients, we try to balance all these three pillars for every patient. So, let’s talk about essential thrombocythemia. This is among the other MPNs, the cancer with the lowest risk. Patients with essential thrombocythemia can have clots and can have bleedings. And they also often have symptoms because of their cancer.

But they also enjoy a long life expectancy that is almost indifferent from patients who don’t have cancer provided they get good care. So, our emphasis is on focusing that their life quality is not touched by their cancer, and focusing on treating patients with symptoms, to ameliorate the symptoms and allowing them to have a decent and good quality of life. At the same time, we would like to reduce the risk of clotting and bleeding.

And we have tools and medicines that are very effective at doing that in select patients who we define as high risk. And now there is a more clear definition of that. So, high-risk patients are patients who are over age 60 and have a JAK2 mutation, or patients who have already had a clot.

That is not the majority of ET patients actually. The majority are not high risk. And those patients might not require therapy to reduce their platelet count.

But for high-risk patients, we have tools to help them. So, hydroxyurea (Hydrea) is the most commonly used medicine in this setting.

The goal of hydroxyurea is to reduce the platelet count. And we’d like to keep it under 400, sometimes under 600 under different circumstances. And that will reduce the risk of clotting and bleeding for our patients. The other option, which I also feel passionate about is interferon.

Interferons are drugs that we’ve used for decades. They’re very effective. They’re safe in the right hands.

And they do have advantages over hydroxyurea in terms of long-term safety. These are medications we can give to young patients, we can give to pregnant patients, we can give for long term without concerns of toxicity, and also they have a higher ceiling. Patients with interferon can achieve a disease control that we cannot achieve with hydroxyurea.

And this will be beneficial long term treating those patients. So, these – Yeah, and then aspirin therapy is always something we would like to include in this regimen.

Katherine:                  

I was going to ask you about that. So, aspirin is still being used as a treatment?

Dr. Yacoub:               

Absolutely. So, the standard of care is to use aspirin. Usually, one baby aspirin once a day, preferably in the morning is what we recommend. And that’s probably all the aspirin they need. We do not want them to take more than that either.

Katherine:                  

And you mentioned using interferons for ET. That’s something that you would also use for polycythemia vera. Yes?

Dr. Yacoub:               

Absolutely. So, the same principles will apply to polycythemia vera. We would like to treat the higher-risk patients more aggressively. Hydroxyurea and interferon are also the first-line therapies in these patients.

The good news in 2022 is that we actually finally have an FDA-approved interferon for our patients. Finally, after 50 years of using interferon, now, we have an FDA approval. So, the new interferon, ropeginterferon alfa-2b is a medication that was studied prospectively in Europe, and it has been approved and in clinical use in Europe under the brand name Besremi.

And this year, it was approved in the US for patients with polycythemia vera, which is a great achievement for the medical field and a great tool to help our patients. We have used other brands off-label in the past, but it’s glad now to get this confirmation from the FDA that this is a standard of care for all patients.

And then beyond that, ruxolitinib or Jakafi, is also approved as a second-line option in patients who have had hydroxyurea as their first line.

So, these are the medicines we use for polycythemia vera. We also use therapeutic phlebotomy. And the goal in high-risk polycythemia vera, or actually in all patient polycythemia vera, is to reduce their hematocrit.

And we want it under 45 percent every day of the year. And we use the tools that we just discussed phlebotomy and medicines to achieve that, in addition to aspirin. So, that’s how PV is more unique than ET. Yes.

Katherine:                  

And since myelofibrosis is a progressive condition, I imagine it’s more difficult to manage. So, what else is available for patients with myelofibrosis?

Dr. Yacoub:               

Correct So, myelofibrosis is the higher end of this spectrum of cancers.

It is a cancer that is associated with much higher symptom burden and impact on daily life. It is also associated with low blood counts, and some patients will require transfusions. It’s a major morbidity to our patients. And in addition, it’s a cancer that is associated with shortened life. So, patients with myelofibrosis will not live as long as their health would have allowed them. And some of them will live actually a much shorter life than they want or deserve.

So, myelofibrosis treatment requires a lot more considerations. So, for patients who are in good health, who have a cancer that is more aggressive, that would be imminently impacting their longevity, we start a discussion about a curative role of allogeneic stem cell transplantation very early in their course.

Because bone marrow transplantation can be curative, and those patients can live a long life after a successful transplant. So, this is a treatment modality that should be brought up very early for patients with higher risk myelofibrosis. There are approved JAK inhibitors, ruxolitinib and fedratinib (Inrebic). And we know that Ruxolitinib which has been approved for over 10 years can improve symptoms, can improve the spleen volume, can actually prolong lives for patients on it, and also makes the transplant more successful.

So, we should be offering that to the appropriate patients also early in their diagnosis, in a strategy where, in addition to that, we get them to a transplant. Fedratinib is approved in that setting. And we are very optimistic that by the end of this calendar year, we will have two other JAK inhibitors approved.

So, we look forward to those two drugs. Momelotinib and pacritinib for patients with special disease features.

[Editor’s Note: As of February 28, 2022, pacritinib (Vonjo) has been approved for the treatment of myelofibrosis patients with severe thrombocytopenia.]

And hopefully, by the end of this year, we will have a list of JAK inhibitors that we can choose from, which is great news for our patients.

Katherine:                  

Oh, we’re still fighting.

Dr. Yacoub:               

Yes, absolutely.

Katherine:                  

As with most conditions, all patients are different, of course, and what might work for one person might not be appropriate for another. So, how do you choose which treatment is right for a patient?

Dr, Yacoub:               

Excellent. So, and that’s actually the heart of what we define as the art of practicing medicine and being patient-centric and focused. And patients already have their own wishes and their needs. And everything should start with having a discussion with patients on what is their priority, and what are they trying to achieve.

And we do have to explain to them the tools we have, the interventions that can help them. But we also need to make sure they’re compatible with what they actually want and their goals in life. And sometimes what we doctors want is not exactly what the patients want. So, we always have to remind ourselves that patients are the drivers of their care. And they have the absolute right to be informed and to make informed decisions based on the options we advise them about.

So, that is always a centerpiece of healthcare. And then patients – Basically, we defined four pillars of care. We want to control their symptoms, we want to prevent complications, we want to modify the disease so it doesn’t transform, and we want our therapies not to have toxicities, not to have side effects that are worse than the disease. So, we bring that up to the table. And we also look at the patient. What is their symptoms? What did the disease cause them to be complications?

What is the risk that their cancer is actually going to progress quickly to hurt their lives? And how serious is the therapy we’re recommending? And we need to make sure that there is a good match between what we’re offering and what the disease is manifesting. So, for example, for patients who have a lot of symptoms, but they have low-risk cancer that they can live with for a long time, we focus on symptoms. We focus on treatments that improve their symptoms.

While with patients who have more serious diseases that are eminently life-threatening, we focus on an expedited path to a more aggressive therapy and a bone marrow transplant. And then we also try to match those therapies with the other patient’s wishes and needs and so forth. So, all these factors are important. We have more tools to try to prognosticate. So, prognosticate is the medical word that we use as forecasting.

We like to forecast the disease or the cancer. We try to predict the patient’s future. Fortunately, we actually have good tools to prognosticate now. We have models or calculators that factor in patients’ features, their symptoms, their age, their blood counts, their bone marrow findings, and their DNA mutations. And it gives us a score a risk score that can correlate with their life expectancy or their outcomes.

And we use those tools to guide us. So, there’s actually a tool we use to help patients reach that decision. It’s an objective tool to decide how serious is this disease and how seriously we should tackle it. It’s very applicable for patients with myelofibrosis, more sort of the other lower-risk cancers.

Katherine:                  

What about comorbidities? How do they fit into the treatment plan?

Dr. Yacoub:               

Very important.

So, again, it also goes back to finding the balance between how serious is the disease, how serious is the treatment, and how will the patient’s general health tolerate and factor in the choices patients make accordingly. So, myeloproliferative neoplasms do happen in a broad range of ages. And we have children, minors with MPNs, and we have elderly patients with MPNs. And it’s a continuous spectrum. And each individual patient will have their own health concerns and their own health comorbidities and their own wishes. And we always have to make sure that we match our therapies, the disease seriousness, and the patient’s wishes, which is also stemming from their own other health battles, too.

We cannot turn a blind eye to the other health issues going on. That plays a major factor as we choose to discuss bone marrow transplantation with patients. Because that’s when the medical comorbidities are often the first barrier to go through.

Katherine:                  

Are there specific biomarkers that may affect prognosis or treatment?

Dr. Yacoub:               

Yes. So, and we’re glad that actually myeloproliferative neoplasms are actually the model in medical oncology on how predictors can tell us a lot more about the patient’s future about the prognosis. So, early on in MPNs, we’ve developed models, like the International Prognostic Scoring Systems in many different iterations. And more recently, the Molecular Based International Prognostic Scores.

They factor in patient’s age, they factor in blood numbers, they factor in DNA abnormalities, they also factor in DNA mutations, including the common driver mutations JAK2 and CALR and MPL, as well as more novel mutations that we call higher risk mutations.

So, based on these models, we use these tools to predict how the cancer will behave, and how to approach it. This advancement has been an application for our MPN patients for a while, way ahead of all other fields of oncology. So, we’re proud that we can give our patients this tool before all other doctors were able to. Yeah.

Katherine:                  

That’s excellent. Dr. Yacoub, what is the role of the patient in their care? When does shared decision-making come into play?

Dr. Yacoub:               

Absolutely.

Patients are the drivers and the centerpiece of their health care. And patient self-advocacy is the most important tool. So, many of our patients are young and they will live with their cancers a lot longer than many cancer doctors will practice oncology. And they will have many doctors. Statistically, each MPN patient will have multiple doctors throughout their career. And they will hear different derivatives. And the science will change. And they will be given different counseling over the time. And their disease will change.

And they will have different needs as they go further. So, patients being involved in their wellbeing and their cancer care is important from the first day. And I always tell patients, “You need to start building your village from day one.” It is not just the patient, it’s your caregivers, it’s who else can help you.

Who else can advise you? You might want to also invest in a friend or a spouse or a child, to come to you and listen to some of those discussions so that they can advise you later on, “Why are you making different decisions?” So, we encourage patients to be very involved early on, to build their own village, and to seek care. We routinely ask for second opinions. We want patients to always hear the story and hear the same story from another doctor so that they hear the range of how we word the truth and how we word the facts.

And this way, they can have a better perspective. So, this is now a standard. Almost all patients should have two doctors, at least, the treating doctor and one doctor who’s an MPN specialist, who would give them another twist or another perspective to their health.

So, and that is always important. And then there are very good references and online resources for patients to tackle in, such as this seminar and other good places where patients can seek more information. They also can go to a clinical trial to find out what are the ongoing clinical trials and advancements.

There are structured patient symposiums nationally and regionally. So, and we strongly recommend that patients seek more opinions and more help and more resources and be very engaged with this disease, especially that it is a chronic cancer, and it’s not going to –

Katherine:                  

It’s not going away.

Dr. Yacoub:               

It’s just a new lifestyle. And they need to be as engaged with it as they can.

Katherine:                  

Absolutely. We have a couple of questions from the audience. This one is from Sarah. She writes, “I’ve been living with essential thrombocythemia for three years, and have been relatively stable. Of course, I’m worried about progression to PV or MF. What is my chance of progression, and what are the signs of progression?”

Dr. Yacoub:               

That’s a very good question. And unfortunately, we’re very good at describing those numbers. Unfortunately, our tools at interfering are not as good. So, in general, patients with ET, statistically speaking, have a life expectancy that is not different from their age match peers. And Sarah’s story will be not too indifferent from her sisters and her mother, in terms of what’s going to happen to her long care and her health, provided she gets good medical care. The exception to that is that there is a transformation risk. For ET we caught around a 4 percent every 10 years in which ET will actually change into a different cancer, a higher risk cancer.

Could be MF, could be MDS, could be acute leukemia. And that will be a much more serious diagnosis. So, it’s about 4 percent in 10 years. We do have a – or we extrapolate some of the data from other cancers. So, certain mutations are more favorable, certain mutations are more risky. And we try to forecast that but worried it’s really hard to predict that since it’s such a long journey with disease. The first symptoms or the findings, when patients start suspecting that their disease has changed, is that the pattern of symptoms that they have are different.

They often become worse. So, they have more constitutional symptoms, more tiredness, more fevers, more night sweats, losing weight, not being able to eat a full meal, abdominal distension, the spleen gets bigger.

So, these are some of the feelings that patients can experience that lead to this. Other objective things is when the blood tests change in a less favorable way. So, for patients with ET who always run at 800,000 platelet count, if they’re suddenly 200, and that’s in the normal range, but that’s actually not good news, because the cancer changed. And this change is not favorable. So, as the doctors run routine labs, if they see the sudden change in labs, that’s also abnormal.

If the doctor can feel that the spleen gets bigger every time, that’s also concerning. If the patients suddenly have anemia or very high white cell count or immature white cells in the blood, that’s also a concern.

So, that’s why it’s great or important to establish a baseline symptom burden.                                   

A baseline spleen, a baseline bone marrow biopsy with mutation analysis, so that patients have a clear reference point to where they started, and if things change, they can always go back to that point and compare.

Katherine:                  

Right. We have another question. This one from Victor. He says, “I was diagnosed with PV in 2018. And I’ve been treated with hydroxyurea. Recently, I’ve been very fatigued. I want to exercise, but I don’t have the energy to do much. Do you have any advice for boosting my energy?”

Dr. Yacoub:               

That is a very good question and very common question. So, the causes for fatigue in adults, in general, so many. And adding PV to that adds a few other reasons why one would be more fatigued. So, assuming that Victor follows with his doctor, and his primary care doctor has systematically went through all the possible causes for fatigue, and those were addressed.

Now that PV specific causes, A). Hydroxyurea can cause fatigue. So, maybe it’s the hydroxyurea dose. And that’s a side effect. And maybe that’s not the best medicine for him. B). Polycythemia vera can cause fatigue. Maybe we’re not controlling it enough. Maybe we need to dial up the dose of the medicine or dial down the dose of the medicine accordingly. And then there’s also the iron deficiency which we induce with PV and phlebotomy.

And whether we actually have taken Victor to become very low on iron, and that can cause fatigue. So, we have to evaluate the treatments, the disease, and the side effects of the interventions we’ve done. And those are the polycythemia vera specific factors that can add to the fatigue.

Katherine:                  

Here’s another question from the audience. This is from Sandy. She writes, are MPNs hereditary? Should my children or siblings be aware of their risk?

Dr. Yacoub:               

All right. Well, the answer to that question changed many times over the last 10 years. So, the answer changed from absolutely not, to very possibly maybe over the years. So, although we don’t think of cancers as inherited, it’s not passed from one parent to their children. But MPNs tend to run in families. And for 11 percent of patients with MPN, and that number has also increased over the years, have actually a first-degree family member with MPN. That is a big coincidence, it’s almost too high to be a coincidence. So, we are realizing that there is genetic makeup or clustering that can cause MPNs to happen more often in certain families.

So, how does this apply to patients? So, if a patient has MPN, that does not mean that their children or siblings will get MPN, it just means they’re more likely than the other people to have MPN, just because they all share the same genetic makeup. And they should be made aware. And they should maintain good health care and maintain the relationship with a primary and have routine labs and all that. But not necessarily that they will get cancer. This still is a very rare disease, and 11 percent of a rare disease still is a small number.

Katherine:                  

Thank you for answering those patient questions. I appreciate it.

Dr. Yacoub:               

My Pleasure.

Katherine:                  

And to our patients, please continue to send in your questions to question@powerfulpatients.org and we’ll work to get them on future programs.

So, Dr. Yacoub, as we close out our program and our conversation, I wanted to get your take on the future of MPN research and treatment. Are there new developments that you’re excited about and that make you hopeful?

Dr. Yacoub:               

Absolutely. So, again, I would like to take the last few minutes to advocate for the future. And the future can only come when doctors and patients and advocates work together to advance the science. We have few tools to treat patients and to help patients. We have a lot of unanswered questions. And the only way to answer them is by designing quality clinical trials, enrolling patients on trials, taking the risk, and trying to find new answers and new therapeutics. So, I always would like to advocate for patients to seek clinical trials whether with their doctor or whether they have to travel for it, and for doctors to consider that for their patients. That’s the only way to advance science.

There are very important national and international studies going on right now. One of the – And first, I would like to emphasize is that we have had ruxolitinib as the only therapy, or the first-line therapy for myelofibrosis for a decade now. Not everybody responds to it, not everybody responds to it for a long time. So, now we’re designing combination trials. So, there’s a few studies that are trying to redefine, “Is ruxolitinib alone enough, or should we have a combination first-line therapy?” So, these are some of the more important questions being asked right now.

And this is definitely one of the bigger moves in the field, is trying to redefine what is the first-line therapy for myelofibrosis. For polycythemia vera, we’re also exploring therapeutics that would reduce phlebotomy with things you can add to your medical care to reduce phlebotomy.

So, that’s also going on. And it’s definitely a big leap forward for many of our patients. For ET, when we don’t have any actual drugs approved other than hydroxyurea and anagrelide (Agrylin), we actually have trials with interferon going on.

So, I would like to advocate for that. So, interferon succeeded and now approved for PV, but not yet for ET. We’re working on that. So, again, in every disease, we’re trying to design clinical trials to redefine what is the best treatment today.

We’re also doing studies to understand the cancer. So, studies where patients donate their samples for research. These are very helpful, very important. And contributing to that always advances the science, and it’s low effort to the patients. So, if there’s a clinical trial that is offered to patients, I would strongly urge everybody to consider that favorably and contribute to science.

That’s the only way we can help future patients and ourselves immediately, at moving the field forward.

Katherine:                  

Seems like there’s a lot of progress in the field.

Dr. Yacoub:               

A lot of progress. I look forward to future events. I’m going to have a lot more tools to discuss. Hopefully, by this time next year, we’re going to have four JAK inhibitors, injectables for PV, interferon for ET, and a lot more things to go over.

Katherine:                  

That’s wonderful. Dr. Yacoub, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today.

Dr. Yacoub:               

You’re welcome. And it’s my pleasure. I feel passionate about this. And I’m happy to help.

Katherine:                  

Thank you. And thank you to all of our partners. To learn more about MPNs and to access tools to help you become a productive patient, visit powerfulpatients.org. I’m Katherine Banwell. Thanks for being with us today.

Updates from ASH: How Biomarker Testing Has Changed MPN Care

Updates from ASH: How Biomarker Testing Has Changed MPN Care from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

MPN specialist, Dr. Andrew Kuykendall, discusses how the identification of specific biomarkers in myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs), such as the JAK2 mutation, have moved research forward. Dr. Kuykendall shares promising findings that were released at the 2021 American Society of Hematology (ASH) annual meeting and how this may impact MPN care in the future.

Dr. Andrew Kuykendall is an Assistant Member at Moffitt Cancer Center in the Department of Malignant Hematology. Dr. Kuykendall’s clinical and research efforts focus on myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs), MDS/MPN overlap syndromes and systemic mastocytosis (SM). Learn more about Dr. Kuykendall, here.

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Transcript

Katherine:

How has molecular or biomarker testing changed the field of MPN care and treatment?

Dr. Kuykendall:

Well, I think, first and foremost just understanding – going back to 2005 and knowing that we have JAK2 mutations. I think that gave really a lot of clarity to the diagnosis and really understanding the biology of how the disease acted through the JAK-STAT pathway. And certainly, that led to the understanding of MPL mutations and then calreticulin mutations.

We’re still figuring out exactly how calreticulin mutations work. There was a great abstract, a preclinical abstract, this year talking about the impact of interferon on calreticulin mutations and how that may differ from what we see in the impact of interferon on diseases that are driven by JAK2 mutations.

Clinically, we see a little bit of difference in how those diseases respond and we may understand a little bit better about why that happens. Additionally, that’s kind of gone down to looking at these big next generation sequencing panels where we identify high-risk mutations and that can certainly change our understanding of the prognosis of these diseases.

We’re starting to get, at least in the AML world, we’re getting targeted agents that can potentially target some of these mutations such as IDH1 and IDH2 mutations that have specific inhibitors.

Those are mutations that occur in myeloproliferative neoplasm patients and convey a worse prognosis, so there are ongoing trials looking to see if we can use those IDH inhibitors in myeloproliferative neoplasms either in the chronic phase or maybe in the more accelerated advanced phase.

You know the big thing, this meeting, was actually looking at polycythemia vera patients and what’s the relevance of the JAK2 mutant allele burden. I think this is something we’ve talked about a lot as far as how significant this is. We know in chronic phase myeloproliferative neoplasms that that JAK2 mutation tends to be associated with more thrombotic complications.

There are more blood clots in the veins and the arteries. There were a couple great abstracts that looked at the really the implications of the JAK2 mutation and the fact that it is associated with more thrombosis, but maybe more venous thrombosis. That might be a big risk factor for venous thrombosis and it may be that cardiovascular risk factors, such as diabetes, hyperlipidemia that’s really what’s driving the arteriole thrombosis. It also looked at the variant allele fraction, the number of cells that have that JAK2 mutation.

One abstract showed that if you have over a 50 percent allele fraction, if more than 50 percent of the alleles have the mutation – a higher burden of that mutation that’s associated with an increased thrombotic risk even in low-risk polycythemia vera patients. Whether or not that’s enough evidence to really change the paradigm of how we treat low-risk patients is to be determined, but I think very interesting and provocative work. 

Expert Advice for Finding an MPN Clinical Trial

Expert Advice for Finding an MPN Clinical Trial from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Dr. Andrew Kuykendall, an MPN specialist and researcher, shares tips for learning about available clinical trials. Dr. Kuykendall emphasizes the importance of seeking a consultation with a specialist and suggests questions to ask your provider about clinical trials.

Dr. Andrew Kuykendall is an Assistant Member at Moffitt Cancer Center in the Department of Malignant Hematology. Dr. Kuykendall’s clinical and research efforts focus on myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs), MDS/MPN overlap syndromes and systemic mastocytosis (SM). Learn more about Dr. Kuykendall, here.

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MPN Research and Optimism About Curative Therapies

 


Transcript

Katherine:

How can patients find out about clinical trials? Are there specific questions that they should be asking their doctors about to participate in a trial?

Dr. Kuykendall:

Yeah. I think it’s tough. One way – there are a few different tools that I would recommend. One, if you’re very interested in just what trials are going on you can go to this national cancer trials, or NCT, network and try to understand online what trials are available. Clinicaltrials.gov is the actual website but that’ll show you the ongoing clinical trials that are there.

You can type in a disease state, so you can type in polycythemia vera or myelofibrosis or essential thrombocythemia, and it’ll give you a huge list of all the trials that are there. It can be kind of overwhelming because it’ll list all of the trials that have ever been done, but there are different ways that you can stratify those results and look for trials that are just recruiting that are active and that’ll taper down that list. And when you click on those trials there usually is at the bottom a list of participating centers that are there. So, you can see the different centers that are there. Overall, I think that that is a very broad way of doing it and somewhat complicated.

What I would ask is – and one of the things that we always push for is – while most of these myeloproliferative neoplasms can be treated quite easily in the community, meaning that the actual mechanisms of what’s being provided is not something that requires a specialized center. I think the understanding of the disease really does. We always recommend having someone in your corner who’s an expert. They don’t have to be the one who is most involved in your care but having someone in your corner who’s an expert.

That’s the person who’s going to know what trials are going on, what trials may be coming down the pipeline, where those trials may be occurring, and they might also tell you “Okay, here are the things that would prompt you to maybe want a trial.” I had a lot of patients that were surprised to realize there were trials available just because they had – they were getting six or seven phlebotomies a year. They were complaining about that but they figured that was just the ways things were. Lo and behold, there was actually a trial that was ongoing that was trying to reduce the need for those phlebotomies in otherwise low-risk patients.

You can always go to clinicaltrials.gov but also try to ask your doctor about hey is there, if you haven’t seen an expert, is there someone close by an expert that I can see for a second opinion just to understand the disease and ask about trials. Usually everyone’s okay with that and when you do see an expert, say “Hey, first of all what trials are right for me now and what in the future might be reasonable and how am I going to know and how often should I check in to see what things are available?” 

The Latest in MPN Research: Updates from ASH 2021

The Latest in MPN Research: Updates from ASH 2021 from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

MPN specialist, Dr. Andrew Kuykendall, shares the latest news from the 2021 American Society of Hematology (ASH) annual meeting. Dr. Kuykendall discusses the latest findings in MPN research, including an update on JAK inhibitors, advances in BET inhibitors, as well as a new therapy in development aimed at reducing phlebotomy in patients with polycythemia vera (PV).

Dr. Andrew Kuykendall is an Assistant Member at Moffitt Cancer Center in the Department of Malignant Hematology. Dr. Kuykendall’s clinical and research efforts focus on myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs), MDS/MPN overlap syndromes and systemic mastocytosis (SM). Learn more about Dr. Kuykendall, here.

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Transcript

Katherine:

You’re joining us following the American Society of Hematology Meeting where cancer researchers came together to share their findings. Are there highlights from the meeting that patients should know about?

Dr. Kuykendall:

Yeah, absolutely. So, the meeting we just came from, the so-called ASH meeting, is really an annual meeting. Happens every December.

It’s really a chance for researchers to share their most exciting findings and really what they’ve been working on for the past few years, and certainly in the past year.

As a clinical researcher, I think I have always a keen interest in clinical trials that are going to give us some new data so we can see how things are working, but I think this is also a big meeting for pre-clinical studies for basic scientists who get to share what’s exciting in their labs. A lot of times that’ll give a preview of what’s to come maybe four, five years down the road what we’ll see on the clinical side. From the clinical side, which is more in my realm, there is certainly a few specific things to get excited about. Within the field of myeloproliferative neoplasms, we have polycythemia vera, ET – essential thrombocythemia, myelofibrosis.

And on the myelofibrosis side of things, I think we continue to get excited about just really the proliferation of drugs that are in late-stage clinical trials. This meeting was no different from that.

We started to get a little bit more clarity as far as this agent, pelabresib, which is a BET inhibitor which is being looked at really in a variety of different settings as a single agent in combination with ruxolitinib (Jakafi) and as an add-on to ruxolitinib as well.

This was another exciting need to get an update on where the data looks to be with pelabresib. Certainly, there’s an ongoing Phase III study in the up-front setting with that agent. We’re anxiously awaiting results too. Additionally, we’ve got more information regarding other JAK inhibitors that may be coming down the pipeline in the coming months to years with momelotinib and pacritinib.

Certainly, that’s always exciting to see the data come from there, especially when we get kind of further along in their trials, we start to get very isolated assessments of their data. Looking specifically at transfusion rates and the efficacy within the subpopulations that have unmet need. And so, I think that that’s always exciting.

I think polycythemia vera – this is a really big meeting for polycythemia vera. We obviously know that ropeginterferon (Besremi) just got FDA-approved in November.

We also started to see the updated data with rusfertide, or PTG-300, which is a hepcidin memetic that aims to reduce phlebotomy rates in patients that are requiring a ton of phlebotomies which, as we know, can be very impactful on quality of life having to get recurrent phlebotomies.

I think that those were the really big highlights, and the take-aways from this is really we are starting to see these agents move into the late-stage clinical trials.

Tips for Discussing MPN Clinical Trials With Your Doctor

Tips for Discussing MPN Clinical Trials With Your Doctor from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Myeloproliferative neoplasm (MPN) expert Dr. Mark Heaney shares advice for talking to your doctor about clinical trials and lists credible resources to help patients find information about clinical trials.

Dr. Mark Heaney is a hematologic oncologist and Associate Professor of Medicine at the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center of Columbia University. Learn more about Dr. Heaney, here.

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Transcript

Katherine Banwell:

When it comes to new developments in research, how can patients discuss this type of information with their doctor to find out if there’s a new approach or a clinical trial that might be right for them?

Dr. Heaney:

Well, I think the first question is to ask if there are clinical trials available.

Unfortunately, in the U.S., clinical trials aren’t available in every location, and often, patients have to go to a larger medical center, often an academic medical center or research center, to have access to clinical trials, and I think that’s one of the inherent challenges of our health system. I don’t have an answer to that.

But, there are lots of places for patients to find out information about clinical trials.

The National Cancer Institute has a website that’s really active. There are a number of blood-disease-focused and MPN-focused patient organizations that patients should avail themselves of. The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society is one that’s been a long advocate for patients, and there are a number of MPN-focused organizations as well.

And so, I think patients should maybe go to the Internet and look around a little bit to get a little information for themselves, but I think also asking their physicians if they’re aware of trials that are available. Within most of the major urban centers, there may be multiple institutions that have a different collection of clinical trials, and I think if you’re being taken care of by a physician at one of those centers, asking him or her if there is a trial that may not be at that center, but might be available in New York or who they might talk to to find out about those trials is a really reasonable thing to do, and a way for patients to self-advocate.

But, it often does require more energy to do that, and I think one of the challenges for some patients with MPNs is that the disease takes away some of that energy, and so, enlisting a family member or friend to help give voice, to advocate for you, is another way of overcoming that.

Promising Research and Treatment Updates From an MPN Expert

Promising Research and Treatment Updates From an MPN Expert from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Myeloproliferative neoplasm (MPN) expert Dr. Mark Heaney shares promising news about about treatments being studied, and how these advances may impact the future of MPN patient care.

Dr. Mark Heaney is a hematologic oncologist and Associate Professor of Medicine at the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center of Columbia University. Learn more about Dr. Heaney, here.

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Transcript

Katherine Banwell:

When it comes to MPN research and emerging treatment options, what are you excited about specifically?

Dr. Heaney:

I think that there are a lot of exciting treatments in MPNs. Now, I’ve been doing this long enough that when I started, we really didn’t have very many treatments, and I think the last few years has brought a number of very promising treatments, and I think more than that, there’s a buzz and much more interest within the physician investigator community and within pharma to develop treatments for patients with MPNs, recognizing that MPNs are still relatively rare diseases.

I think we’re on the brink of having several new treatments for myelofibrosis, and as of today, they’re investigational, but they may be available even within the next year, and that will give us more opportunities. Drugs like pacritinib and momelotinib, I think, provide effective treatment options for patients who may not be responding optimally to ruxolitinib or in whom ruxolitinib may not be the best choice because of low blood counts.

I think that drugs like ropeginterferon, which may well be approved soon, may provide another treatment for patients with polycythemia vera.

And then, beyond these drugs, which are both – which are all in late-phase investigation, there’s a plethora of drugs that appear really promising that are earlier in evaluation.

I think one of the things that’s been not really attainable with the drugs that we’ve had to date has been to really reduce the contribution of the mutant clone to blood cell production, and this is a concept that has really revolutionized the treatment of patients with another myeloproliferative disease, chronic myeloid leukemia, and we know from that disease patients who had suppression of the malignant clone have done remarkably well and now live lives that are really indistinguishable from patients who don’t have leukemia.

I think the new drugs that are in clinical development are adding to the ability of suppressing them more than clones, and so, we’re getting closer to drugs and drug combinations that may have that ability. There is, for example, a drug that’s in late-stage development, a BET inhibitor – that’s CPI-0610 – that’s now entering Phase III trials that seems to be very promising.

There are other drugs that attack other pathways, like MDM2 and the BTK pathway, that are also very promising.

And, I think they’re also – we’re also on the advent of introducing cellular therapy into myelofibrosis, so that’s another dimension of treatment, and I think all of these will present new opportunities for patients in whom ruxolitinib may not work or may not be the optimal therapy.

Why You Should Understand Your MPN Treatment Plan

Why You Should Understand Your MPN Treatment Plan from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Myeloproliferative neoplasm (MPN) expert Dr. Mark Heaney discusses the importance of understanding the goals of your treatment plan, including key questions to ask your doctor before beginning therapy.

Dr. Mark Heaney is a hematologic oncologist and Associate Professor of Medicine at the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center of Columbia University. Learn more about Dr. Heaney, here.

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Transcript

Katherine Banwell:

Are there questions that patients should ask about their proposed treatment plan?

Dr. Heaney:

Yeah. I think patients should ask a lot of questions. I think a lot of patients don’t ask as many questions as they should, but I think there are a number of things that are important for patients to know. Number one, the question is whether they need treatment at all and what happens if they defer treatment. So, really, what – and, that’s another way of asking what the goal of treatment is going to be. Now, I think patients should have an expectation of what their physician thinks the benefit of starting a particular treatment might be.

I think that they should ask questions about the drugs that they’re taking. Are they new drugs? Are they well established? What are the side effects? And, I think the side effects fall into a number of different categories. Some of the side effects are immediate side effects that patients have and notice soon after they start taking the drugs.

Some of the side effects can be much more subtle, and we know, for example, that some of the agents that are used to treat myeloproliferative neoplasms can suppress the immune system and can make patients more susceptible to infection. Especially today, with lots of infections out there, it’s important for patients to know whether this is something that they should be particularly attuned to. I think that patients should also find out whether there are any lifestyle inhibitions.

So, sometimes, how many times you take a drug, whether the drug has to be taken on an empty stomach or with food – those sorts of things, I think, can be really important in deciding whether this is a treatment that’s right for the individual patient.

Katherine Banwell:

Yeah. Dr. Heaney, how would you define treatment goals, and why is it important that patients understand the goals of their treatment plan?

Dr. Heaney:

Often – often, patients do start treatment without a clear understanding of what the goals are, and I think sometimes, the goals that physicians have may be different than the ideal goals of the patient. I think we’re really fortunate in myelofibrosis today that we now know that ruxolitinib is something that prolongs survival, and we have a drug that has that ability.

And, I think articulating that as a goal to patients is important in their understanding of why a physician might want to push through some toxicities and say, “I know that this may be causing some GI upset, but we’re doing this because we think this is something that may help you to live longer.” So, I think that’s part of – and, that may be the physician’s main goal. That may not necessarily be the patient’s main goal, and the patient’s main goal may be quality of life. And so, having – it goes back to the question about dialogue and understanding what the patient really wants out of his or her treatment and making sure that the patient and the physicians are talking to each other, not past each other.

Will Your MPN Progress? What You Need to Know.

Will Your MPN Progress? What You Need to Know. from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPN) expert Dr. Mark Heaney discusses how MPNs may progress from one to the next and addresses the possibility of slowing disease progression.

Dr. Mark Heaney is a hematologic oncologist and Associate Professor of Medicine at the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center of Columbia University. Learn more about Dr. Heaney, here.

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Transcript:

Katherine Banwell:    

Patients living with MPNs are often concerned about disease progression. Will everyone progress?

Dr. Heaney:

Now, we don’t know the answer to that question. There are patients with myelofibrosis and other MPNs who we know live more than 20 years with their disease.

In general, the natural history of the disease is one of gradual progression, and some people have more rapid progression than others. We know that there are patients who will die of complications of their disease, but not everyone will progress, and there are some patients where observation without treatment, even in the face of some progression, may be a very reasonable treatment plan.

There may be times, though, when it’s not really possible to maintain a quality of life without some treatment, and one of the ways of slowing that kind of progression may be with some of the available therapies of – approved therapies and investigational therapies. But, I guess the short answer to your question is not everyone will die of his or her disease, even if the disease does progress, and there are some patients in whom that progression is so slow that they’re able to live really full lives without it – without the disease’s interfering with their lives.

Katherine Banwell:

Is there a way to prevent progression?

Dr. Heaney:

Well, there isn’t a magic pill that stops progression. A lot of my patients ask if there’s some diet, if there’s something that they can do that will change the course of the disease.

And, the short answer for, I think, the overwhelming majority of patients is there isn’t anything that’s a magic bullet. We believe that drugs like ruxolitinib in myelofibrosis can slow the progression of disease.

There are drugs in other MPNs that we also think may slow disease progression even if they don’t completely halt progression. For some patients – admittedly, the minority – who might be candidates for allogeneic stem cell transplant, we know that that can be curative, and so, in that way, that can prevent progression in those patients.

And so, I think it’s important to, again, go back to your physician, understand what progression means, understand what – how the proposed treatment might interact with that progression, and again, getting back to the question of outcomes and goals of therapy, understand clearly what the treatment plan is aimed to do.

How to Partner With Your Doctor on Treatment Decisions

How to Partner With Your Doctor on Treatment Decisions from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPN) expert Dr. Mark Heaney explains the role of shared decision-making when choosing therapy and discusses how MPN patients can benefit from taking an active role in their care.

Dr. Mark Heaney is a hematologic oncologist and Associate Professor of Medicine at the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center of Columbia University. Learn more about Dr. Heaney, here.

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Transcript:

Katherine Banwell:    

 The terms “shared decision-making” is being used lately when we talk about patient care. What does that term mean to you?

Dr. Heaney:

Well, I think it’s really important for patients to be involved in their care, and I think it’s part of shared care, and I think that patients who are really in partnership with their physicians are able to make better choices, and there’s much better communication.

So, to me, that’s the basis of the physician-patient relationship. It’s less of an asymmetrical relationship and much more of an equal relationship.

Katherine Banwell:

Why should patients take an active role in their care? How do they benefit?

Dr. Heaney:

Well, patients who take an active role in their care, I think, provide much more input to their physicians and let them know how they’re feeling, and I think that allows their physicians to know much better what kind of side effects they might be having, whether they’re getting any benefit from the drug, whether they’re having symptoms that are related to the disease, and that kind of communication is really central to patients being able to make the best decisions for themselves and getting the best advice from their physicians.

MPN Research and Optimism About Curative Therapies

MPN Research and Optimism About Curative Therapies from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Myeloproliferative neoplasm (MPN) researcher Dr. John Mascarenhas discusses why he’s excited about the future of care for patients with essential thrombocythemia (ET), polycythemia vera (PV), and myelofibrosis (MF).

Dr. John Mascarenhas is Associate Professor of Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS) and the Director of the Adult Leukemia Program and Leader of Clinical Investigation within the Myeloproliferative Disorders Program at Mount Sinai. Learn more about Dr. Mascarenhas, here.

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Transcript

Katherine Banwell:

Before we close, Dr. Mascarenhas, let’s talk about research. Are there new developments that you’re excited about?

Dr. Mascarenhas:       

Absolutely. So, what I’m heavily interested in and involved in is clinical investigation and moving the field forward, and there are many people out there that are similarly involved and they’re doing really excellent work. So, I am super jazzed and enthusiastic and optimistic, and it’s what gets me work every day and inspires me is all of the effort that is happening. And, it’s a continuum. So, it’s not just one person trying to try a different drug here and there. It’s really a bringing together of many different people because these are rare diseases.

Many different people from many different institutions that have different areas of expertise, but have a common goal of translating from laboratory informed data, so, not just taking a dart and throwing it at the dartboard and hoping it sticks. But actually taking data that we learned from the lab and leveraging that information to develop therapies that are informed, that are targeted, that are personalized and going through a process of evaluating them to get them into the clinic, with the goal of, and I would say ambitiously, our goal these days is moving beyond trying to make patients feel better, which is an important goal, but it’s really can we really target the disease in a more effective way to induce remissions, to, dare I say, cure patients. So, I think the ambitious goal of the clinical investigators and laboratory investigators that are active in MPN research today is really one looking for an understanding at the basis of the biology of the  disease to develop curative therapies. And, I am optimistic that that will happen.

And, I don’t mean happen in a hundred years from now. I mean happen in our lifetime. So, that’s where we’re going. There’s a lot of very exciting drugs, oral and intravenous drugs and they target very different types of aspects of the disease, and I think patients and physicians will see that maybe those drugs are used best in combination. So, the idea of using one drug, waiting for it to fail and using another drug is really old news, and much of oncology is combination therapy. So, taking drugs that have different targets or mechanisms of action and non-overlapping toxicity to try to better target and delete what’s called the myelofibrosis stem cell that’s the basic issue here, which we don’t effectively delete other than transplant. So, our goal would be to put bone marrow transplanters out of business.