[BallerinaBritt]

Anyone know of this new German study?

by BallerinaBritt on Thu May 14, 2015 12:12 pm

Last night, my local support group hosted Dr. Joshua Richter from John Theurer Cancer Center in New Jersey. At the end of his presentation, group members had the opportunity to ask questions related to their personal myeloma experiences. Long story short, my original question led into him telling me about a new German study that was shown to improve PFS and OS of those with translocation t(4;14) to the point where these patients had outcomes as good as Good Risk patients. He said to ask our doctor about the Hovon/GMMG study.

He said newly diagnosed patients with translocation t(4;14) were started on VRD induction, did tandem transplant, then followed up with VRD consolidation. He said he would now be recommending this to his newly diagnosed with translocation t(4;14) patients, followed by no maintenance. Apparently this is the only study that has shown a specific treatment option that works better for a particular subset of patients (the goal being to pair particular treatments with patients based on their individual characteristics). He said this classically high risk disease performs like good risk after this treatment.

The doctor made it sound like these findings were very new and that our specialist would probably be surprised that we knew about it. I would like to do some more research before bringing it up with the doctor, but all I can find are old studies that reference VAD vs PAD induction, auto then allo transpants, and then bortezomib based maintenance. Risk of death within the first year is 23%. This doesn't sound like what he was talking about.

Can anyone else point me in the right direction?

Thanks!