Myeloma Research: What’s the Latest Treatment News?
Myeloma Research: What’s the Latest Treatment News? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.
Myeloma expert Dr. Rafael Fonseca shares updates from recent conferences and provides tips to help you stay up-to-date on myeloma research developments.
Dr. Rafael Fonseca is the interim director of Mayo Clinic Cancer Center and serves as the director for Innovation and Transformational Relationships at Mayo Clinic in Arizona. Learn more about Dr. Fonseca here.
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Transcript:
Katherine:
Dr. Fonseca, have there been any recent developments in myeloma treatment in research that make you hopeful?
Dr. Fonseca:
Absolutely. I would say that the one area of work that makes me most hopeful is what we’re seeing with immunotherapy. We have seen that both as the ASH meeting, as well as the ASCO meeting in this year, where people are presenting updates with the various clinical trials with either bi-specific antibodies or CAR T-cell therapy as a new avenue for the treatment of myeloma.
In fact, at the last ASH meeting, we had 14 presentations of different compounds or different constructs that are active.
I think the future is bright in that regard. We’re seeing their application right now. A lot of these updates have also been made at ASCO.
We’re seeing the update of the treatment of treatments with fairly advanced and aggressive disease where we can still show very significant responses. I participate in some of these trials. I can tell you in my institution, using some of the bi-specifics, I see patients who have previously exhausted all of their options and now are MRD-negative at 10 to the -6.
If we’re seeing that in the very advanced disease, I cannot wait to see what happens when we start using these treatments in either early relapse and why not in the near future as frontline part of our therapy? I think to me, that whole field of T-cell engagers, where there’s bi-specifics or the CAR T cells remains one of the most exciting areas for future research.
Katherine:
How can patients stay up to date on information like this?
Dr. Fonseca:
I think what we alluded to before is very important to work with groups like yours and other patient support organizations that can keep them up to date. I think they’re doing a very good job at also providing updates post some of the large meetings. I know there’s a lot of patients out there that are very sophisticated that will even join the medical meetings. That happens with some frequency; that they want to learn, and patients that go and ask me details about the statistics of the trial. That’s a whole spectrum, right?
But at the minimum, I would say a strong connection with a support group, or a patient support organization becomes an imperative as you deal with
this. Also, that would help you because with this whole concept of the information not always being complete and truthful, that can be scary as well, too.
If someone goes and just looks for, I would say even some of the resources that are out there in a textbook today, just keep in mind that textbook was probably written five years ago, and it represents the studies of about 10 or 15 years ago. How that relates to you, it’s very distant. So, it is because of this continuous process of research that we know better what’s going on at the present time.