MPN Treatment Decisions: Which Path is Best for You?

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MPN Treatment Decisions: Which Path is Best for You? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Dr. Ruben Mesa provides an overview of available treatments and reviews important factors to consider when choosing a therapy for essential thrombocythemia (ET), polycythemia vera (PV) or myelofibrosis (MF).

Dr. Ruben Mesa is an international expert in the research and care of patients with myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs). He serves as director of UT Health San Antonio MD Anderson Cancer Center in San Antonio, Texas. More about this expert here.

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Transcript:

Dr. Ruben Mesa:

The treatment landscape for myeloproliferative neoplasms is changing very rapidly. And in a good way, it’s increasingly having many more options for patients with Myeloproliferative Neoplasms. But I would separate it, really, into two groups. First, there are those individuals with essential thrombocythemia and polycythemia vera.

These individuals, we have newer therapies, such as interferons, we have, potentially, use of JAK inhibitors, we have some experimental therapies, as well as prior therapies we’ve used and become accustomed to, including hydroxyurea, phlebotomy, and aspirin.

But we’re learning much more about how to use these therapies; how to combine them; what constitutes success with these therapies; what should constitute a change in terms of therapy.

And there are new therapies being developed in the future that will impact this group of individuals with earlier MPNs: ET and PV.

For patients with myelofibrosis, the treatment is evolving. Patients with Myelofibrosis are affected in different ways. It is, in some ways, a more problematic disease.

There is evolution of our most impactful therapy, of stem cell transplantation. We have a better sense of in which patients we should consider that treatment, and how that can be applied in the safest way. We also have more medical treatments. We just saw in 2019 the approval of Fedratinib as the second specific JAK inhibitor approved for patients with myelofibrosis.

We, additionally, now have, truly dozens of clinical trials of new therapies in development that are in clinical trials right now that might be helpful for patients with myelofibrosis who have either had Ruxolitinib, or have a suboptimal response to Ruxolitinib, or sometimes even newly diagnosed patients. But I would say the future is very bright.

So, it is key with a treatment to first understand what is the treatment, what is the dose, and what is the goal? Each of the treatments have different goals. Some of the goals are to decrease the likelihood of blood clots or bleeding.

And frequently, we assess whether we’re protecting against the blood clots or bleeding by bringing down elevated counts. Is the plate account high, and we’re trying to bring it into the normal range? Is the hematocrit high, and we’re trying to bring that to under 45%? Is the white blood cell count high? Have we lowered each of those? First, it’s around controlling blood counts if that is the goal, as well as trying to decrease at risk of blood clots or bleeding.

 Second, if patients have symptoms associated with their MPN, sometimes itching, sometimes symptoms associated with high courts, sometimes enlargement of the spleen, or symptoms associated with the spleen, have we reduced or nullified those symptoms? Have we shrunk the spleen if the spleen was enlarged?

And then, finally, we assess our goal by trying to be sure that patients are not progressing or getting worse on the disease. So, depending upon the treatment, we first asses what is our goal? Is it to improve counts? Is it to improve symptoms? Is it to shrink the spleen? And have we accomplished one, two, or all three of those goals? Or was only one those our goals to begin with? 

Ready to Start an MPN Treatment? What You Need to Consider.

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Ready to Start an MPN Treatment? What You Need to Consider. from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Lindsey Lyle discusses the factors that should be considered when choosing a therapy.

Lindsey Lyle is a physician assistant at the University of Colorado Cancer Center, specializing in hematological malignancies with a subspecialty in myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs). More about this expert here.

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Transcript:

Lindsey:

When deciding about a treatment, it’s really important for the healthcare professional and the patient to discuss the patient’s goals.

The patient really is the key player here, and we as medical professionals are here to support the patient’s goals. So, what might work for one patient is not going to be necessarily the same treatment I would choose for a different patient. So, right off the bat, identifying the patient’s goals – and really, what are we trying to fix in one specific patient is going to look different from the next patient I see in that day.

For example, there are certain clinical manifestations of MPNs that need specific treatment approaches and maybe honing in on trying to help one clinical issue.

So, first of all, identifying the disease process – that’s No. 1. What is the diagnosis? No. 2: Coming up with a goals of care plan with the patient. What is causing them the most difficulty in their everyday life, and how are we going to fix that? That’s generally where I start.

Then, I discuss with the patients the different options for treatment, which either include therapies that are FDA-approved or enrolling in a clinical trial. And then, we really talk about pluses and minuses for each of these therapeutic decisions.

Patients may have different comorbidities, so they may suffer from different chronic diseases that may impact the treatment that is chosen with the patient and their provider, as well as discussing stem cell transplant, which we haven’t talked much about, but stem cell transplant is an option, and at this point, the only curative therapy for patients with myelofibrosis. And so, determining whether or not transplant is in the patient’s best interest is also a topic of discussion when deciding on therapy approach.

Diagnosed With an MPN? Why You Should Consider a Second Opinion.

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Diagnosed With an MPN? Why You Should Consider a Second Opinion. from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo. 

 Physician assistant Lindsey Lyle explains the importance of seeking a second opinion when diagnosed with an MPN.

Lindsey Lyle is a physician assistant at the University of Colorado Cancer Center, specializing in hematological malignancies with a subspecialty in myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs). More about this expert here.

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Transcript:

Lindsey:

When a patient is initially diagnosed with an MPN, seeking a second opinion is generally a very good idea, especially if patients are perhaps in an area where they do not have access to academic medical center.

The reason is that MPNs are such a small percentage of blood cancers – and, blood cancers in and of themselves are very rare, so MPNs are very rare, and especially in rural places, physicians do not have access or experience so much with MPNs. So, especially in those scenarios, I always advise a second opinion.

However, even within the academic medicine world, for example, if a patient is referred to me by their primary care physician or our institution, we always offer patients to seek a second opinion. Really, this is to gather information and either encourage the patient because the recommendation is the same or also to perhaps have a different idea for treatment that may fit the goals of the patient better, and so, I’m always telling patients to seek second opinions.

An Expert Summary of Current MPN Treatment Options

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An Expert Summary of Current MPN Treatment Options from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

 MPN expert, Lindsey Lyle, provides an overview of therapies used to treat myelofibrosis (MF), polycythemia vera (PV) and essential thrombocythemia (ET).

Lindsey Lyle is a physician assistant at the University of Colorado Cancer Center, specializing in hematological malignancies with a subspecialty in myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs). More about this expert here.

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Transcript:

Lindsey:

To overview the treatment types for MPNs, we have a variety of different mechanisms in which we use, and clumping these three main MPNs together, we can kind of break it down into, first of all, cytoreductive therapy, which is nonspecific, but really just reduces the amount of cells the bone marrow is producing. And so, it’s really to control the blood counts. And, different types of cytoreductive therapy generally are – hydroxyurea is used probably the most commonly.

There are some other sorts of chemotherapy that may be used in different instances. We also have biological agents, such as interferons, that may be used in patients with MPNs. We then have JAK inhibitors, which there are two FDA-approved JAK inhibitors at this point for myelofibrosis, and one approved for polycythemia vera.

We also have a variety of novel agents in clinical trials. These may be inhibiting different pathways of the cellular production or different signaling pathways at the level of the stem cell, so there are a variety of those. We also use hypomethylating agents in some patients who maybe have higher-risk disease, mainly myelofibrosis, that really changes the way that the stem cells are produced in the bone marrow in order to control the cell counts and also symptoms.

So, there are a variety of therapeutic measures that are taken. Additionally, not necessarily medication-related, but phlebotomy, which is considered a therapy for polycythemia vera, is generally used in order to reduce red blood cell volume, and then, aspirin is commonly used, especially in polycythemia vera and essential thrombocythemia as a supportive care medication to reduce risk of complications from the disease.