While chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T–cell therapy has revolutionized the treatment landscape for multiple myeloma, the high demand for these efficacious therapies has made patient selection a challenge. At the recent International Myeloma Society Annual Meeting, Beth Faiman, a Nurse Practitioner at the Cleveland Clinic, presented a poster about a clinical factor scoring system that she and her colleagues have developed to aid in these decisions. In this follow-up interview with Oncology Data Advisor, Dr. Faiman explains how this innovative system works and the next steps to validate it and implement it into practice in the future.
In this interview with Oncology Data Advisor, Dr. Joshua Sasine, Hematologist-Oncologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, discusses the factors that make patients suitable candidates for chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, strategies to minimize the unique toxicities associated with these treatments, and the future of the use of CAR T-cell therapy in the outpatient setting.
At the recent International Myeloma Society (IMS) Annual Meeting, Donna Catamero, NP, the Associate Director of Myeloma Translational Research at Mount Sinai Hospital, presented her abstract regarding increasing clinical trial accrual of minority patients. In this interview, Ms. Catamero discusses her presentation, the disproportionate burden that minority patients experience, and why she believes the health care team should take action to create an equal space for everyone in the clinic.
Oncology Data Advisor™ · Can Digital Health Tools Improve Quality of Life in Multiple Myeloma? In this interview in honor of Multiple Myeloma Awareness Month, Dr. Rahul Banerjee, a Clinical Fellow in Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and member of the Oncology Data Advisor Editorial Board, speaks with Dr. Neha Korde of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center about the potential of digital health tools to improve quality of life for patients with multiple myelom...
For patients with relapsed or refractory (R/R) multiple myeloma (MM), a new treatment has just been recently FDA approved: belantamab mafodotin-blmf (BLENREP®, GlaxoSmithKline). In an interview with i3 Health, Hans C. Lee, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, speaks about the significance of this approval and what the future may look like on treating these patients. What are the most challenging aspects of treating patients with R/R MM? Hans C. Lee, MD: While there have been...
Although targeted therapies have improved survival for patients with multiple myeloma, relapse still occurs. One hypothesis regarding why relapse happens is that the skeleton provides a niche in which dormant myeloma cells can hide. When scientists testing this hypothesis identified a strategy to sequence the transcriptome of individual dormant myeloma cells from the bones of tumor-ridden mice, they discovered that a specific transcriptome expressed by myeloma cells enriches immune genes and mye...
The FDA has now approved daratumumab (Darzalex®, Janssen) to be used in combination with bortezomib, thalidomide, and dexamethasone (VTd) in adult patients with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma who are eligible for an autologous stem cell transplant. Daratumumab, a targeted monoclonal antibody, works by attaching itself to a protein called CD38 on multiple myeloma cells. This either directly kills the multiple myeloma cells or allows the body to identify these cells as a foreign invader, therefo...