Tag Archive for: INSIST! Myeloma

Accessing Personalized Myeloma Treatment | What Patients Should Know Resource Guide

 

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Which Myeloma Treatment Is Right for You? What You Need to Know Resource Guide

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Meet Jack Aiello: Myeloma Survivor and PEN Board Member

In this podcast, Jack Aiello, myeloma survivor and Patient Empowerment Network (PEN) board member, shares his myeloma story. Having been diagnosed with myeloma more than 20 years ago, Jack share his perspective as an advocate and his optimism about the future of myeloma care.

About the Guest:
Jack Aiello is a multiple myeloma survivor and patient advocate. Jack is involved with a number of advocacy organizations around the country, including serving on the Board of Directors for the Patient Empowerment Network. Learn more about Jack here: https://powerfulpatients.org/2019/01/03/jack-aiello.

Myeloma Testing and Treatment: Insist on Better Care

In this podcast, Charise Gleason a nurse practitioner, provides an overview of myeloma. Charise discusses necessary myeloma testing, how test results may affect treatment options, and why patients should ask questions and seek advice from their healthcare team without hesitation.

About the Guest:
Charise Gleason is a nurse practitioner specializing in myeloma and serves as the Advanced Practice Provider Chief at Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University. Learn more about Charise, here.


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INSIST! on Better Myeloma Care Resource Guide

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How Targeted Therapy Works to Treat Myeloma

How Targeted Therapy Works to Treat Myeloma from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo

Nurse practitioner Charise Gleason explains how targeted therapies work to fight myeloma and how they may be used in combination. Charise also discusses how targeted therapies differ from radiation chemotherapy.

Charise Gleason is a nurse practitioner specializing in myeloma and serves as the Advanced Practice Provider Chief at Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University. Learn more about Charise, here.

See More From INSIST! Myeloma

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Essential Tests & Imaging After a Myeloma Diagnosis

Lab Tests in Myeloma: Key Results to Monitor

Myeloma Targeted Therapy: Why Identifying Chromosomal Abnormalities is Key


Transcript:

Charise:                       

Plasma cells or myeloma cells have a target on the outside. And so, CD38 is a very common one. You think of daratumumab, for instance, that targets CD38, because it’s on the surface of every plasma cell.

You have what’s called CS1 on the surface of plasma cells that elotuzumab targets.

And these drugs target that particular marker to break down that myeloma cell in a different way. The reason we use combination therapies are not just because we think this is a great idea to put them together. We know dexamethasone, for instance, is going to make that plasma cell more presentable and make that target more presentable to let, for instance, daratumumab work on it. And then you take something like an immunomodulatory agent that works in another way. But as far as targets, that’s on the surface of the cell is what we’re looking for on that particular one.

With the translocation, that’s one that’s very specific. If you take a translocation (11;14), those patients can express high BCMA, another target on a plasma cell.

And so, that’s the reason again why that works for some of those patients, because it attaches and kills the myeloma starting from that outside and working into the cell.

The traditional chemotherapy approaches just worked at killing everything, including normal cells, right? And so, you have a patient who gets admitted for chemotherapy, for instance, it knocks everything down and with that, the myeloma. And then those cells come back up. And so, you think of that more from a traditional admit to the hospital. We give several days of chemotherapy or the conditioning regimen for transplant with melphalan It wipes out everything.

And so, sometimes we still need to do that and do that maneuver to reset the bar. But there’s more risk to the patient with that, we’re making a patient more immunocompromised. With targeted therapy, it’s more specific to that target. So, it’s really working more to kill those abnormal cells in there. So, the patient doesn’t experience quite that same immunosuppressive state where everything is knocked down.

Myeloma Targeted Therapy: Why Identifying Chromosomal Abnormalities is Key

Myeloma Targeted Therapy: Why Identifying Chromosomal Abnormalities is Key from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Charise Gleason, a nurse practitioner, provides insight as to why identifying chromosomal abnormalities is essential when it comes to targeted therapy as a treatment choice for myeloma.

Charise Gleason is a nurse practitioner specializing in myeloma and serves as the Advanced Practice Provider Chief at Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University. Learn more about Charise, here.

See More From INSIST! Myeloma

Related Programs:

 

Essential Tests & Imaging After a Myeloma Diagnosis

Lab Tests in Myeloma: Key Results to Monitor

Key Considerations When Choosing Myeloma Treatment: What’s Available?


Transcript:

Charise:                       

So, testing for chromosome abnormalities or changes are important when it comes to targeted therapy.

And we used to think of this more in that relapse setting. But we also look at it upfront now, because it tells us more about the path of myeloma. And there are reasons to check throughout at relapse, again, to see if something’s changed. So, with targeted therapy, we can use the translocation (11;14), for instance.

Many patients have a translocation t(11;14). It’s not a high-risk feature. But we know on clinical trial we have a drug that we’re using called venetoclax that those patients can be very sensitive to.

And so, we’re looking at this not just in translocations but in sequencing for other abnormalities or gene mutations that can help guide us with these newer therapies. And you see that across all cancer types at this point. So, you can get very specific with a patient’s type of myeloma – that this drug is going to work better because you have this mutation.

So, we look at it upfront. It guides us for risk stratification: standard risk versus high risk. And then we look at it in that relapse setting. Do we have a drug or a clinical trial that this patient will respond better to because of those abnormalities?

When we’re risk stratifying, we know standard risk, medium risk, and high risk. Those are those translocations, those gene mutations, that we know about.

But newer testing, like sequencing, gives us a lot more mutations that we don’t even know what to do with them all yet.

We don’t necessarily have drugs for all of them, but it does help guide us down the road. So, right now some common are the translocations, but also deletion 17p, which we’ve known about for a while. But maybe you see a BRAF mutation, which you typically associate with other types of cancers, but we see that in myeloma as well.

So, it helps us look at is there a drug that our myeloma patient might benefit from because they have a BRAF mutation, for instance. 

Essential Imaging and Chromosome Tests after a Myeloma Diagnosis

Essential Imaging & Chromosome Tests After a Myeloma Diagnosis from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Charise Gleason, a nurse practitioner, explains why tests such as bone marrow biopsy, FISH test and full-body imaging are considered essential for patients after a myeloma diagnosis.

Charise Gleason is a nurse practitioner specializing in myeloma and serves as the Advanced Practice Provider Chief at Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University. Learn more about Charise, here.

See More From INSIST! Myeloma

Related Programs:

Myeloma Targeted Therapy: Why Identifying Chromosomal Abnormalities is Key

Lab Tests in Myeloma: Key Results to Monitor

Key Considerations When Choosing Myeloma Treatment: What’s Available?


Transcript:

Charise:                       

The essential testing that a myeloma patient should undergo following a diagnosis is – obviously, you’ve had those diagnostic test labs, the 24-hour urine, some scans, but the specific things that we need are a bone marrow biopsy.

That includes cytogenetics and FISH, and we can talk a little bit more about that. You also want full-body imaging. We used to always use a skeletal survey, which was an X-ray of the long bones. But, really, the standard of care now is a whole-body scan.

So, depending on what your oncologist or your institution has, that would be a full-body CT scan, a PET-CT scan, or a full-body MRI. So, one of those tests is recommended. It’s not unusual if you have a PET. Like our institution, we use PET-CT. So, for a newly diagnosed patient, we’re also going to get an MRI of the spine for a further snapshot.

What we’re looking for with a full-body imaging is we want to make sure that there aren’t any lytic lesions.

So, with an X-ray, you have to have about 30 percent bone loss before it’s going to show up on an X-ray. So, those traditional X-rays that we used to use could actually miss an active lesion. So, in that diagnosis, we want to know that there is no active myeloma. And those other scans are going to be more specific to that.

So, the cytogenetics of a bone marrow biopsy are going to tell us more about the biology of the disease. So, cytogenetics actually grows out the pairs of cells. And so, that’s why that portion of the test can take a while to get back.

At our institution, it can take two to three weeks, because you’re actually growing out those cells to look at the chromosomes. And remember these are chromosomes, or genes, of the plasma cells. And so, we’re looking for those abnormalities that might be present. So, you think about it more for the biology of the disease.

When we’re looking at FISH, we’re also looking… That test shows a little bit different. It comes back quicker. It shows two different phases of cell changes.

And so, it will tell us about chromosomes as well. But do you have any additional chromosomes – so, that would make it a hyperdiploid narrow. It tells us if there’s a loss of a chromosome – so, you’re missing one, a hypodiploid. It also tells us about translocations – so, when you’ve had a piece of a chromosome change and go to another cell. And so, that, for instance, would be like that translocation t(11;14) or translocation t(4;14). So, it’s essential to have that testing to tell us about that, because it helps guide treatment. And as we talk more about targeted therapy, these things really can come into play.