[Beacon Staff]

ASCO 2010: Revlimid as maintenance therapy after ASCT

by Beacon Staff on Fri May 21, 2010 8:44 am

The press already is talking about two sets of research results that will be presented at this year's ASCO meeting. Reuters has an article about two trials that look into the impact of using Revlimid (lenalidomide) as maintenance therapy after autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT).

In both trials, myeloma patients underwent ASCT and then were given either Revlimid or placebo as maintenance therapy. The evidence from the trials is conclusive that the patients receiving Revlimid had a lower probability of disease progression. The data apparently is less clear as to whether or not Revlimid gives a statistically significant survival benefit versus placebo.

Abstracts for the two sets of research results are available online here and here.

Anyone else care to comment on the results or ask questions about them?

[Dr. Craig Hofmeister]

Re: ASCO 2010: Revlimid as maintenance therapy after ASCT

by Dr. Craig Hofmeister on Fri May 21, 2010 11:08 pm

These abstracts bring up a great time to highlight the difference between time to progression (TTP) and progression free survival (PFS).

Time to progression is the duration from start of treatment to disease progression, with deaths due to causes other than progression "censored" -- in a complicated way that means that those events don't count.

Progression free survival is the duration from the start of treatment to disease progression OR death (regardless of cause), whichever comes first.

While PFS is a more robust endpoint than TTP from a patient point of view, both endpoints pale in comparison to most important endpoint, overall survival, which is the time from start of treatment to death from any cause.

I look forward to overall survival data reported from both of these important trials.