[GaryeBlau]

Re: ASH 2011 Multiple Myeloma Discussion - Day 1

by GaryeBlau on Mon Dec 12, 2011 1:04 pm

Boris: What a fantastic bit of reporting. You strip away all the "foo-foo" dust and lay out the facts....Twenty "new drugs" many of which show minimal reponse. How sad.
I love the discussion between sub-Q and IV Velcade. Surprise. Surprise. pharmacokinetics makes a difference. Any experiment in which the actualy concentration of the chemo agents in the blood is measured with time is a step in the right direction. Rather that the search for the "silver bullet" perhaps we will indeed get the docs to focus on individualized dosing and optimizing what we already have and lengthen the high quality survival times for us patients.

[Boris Simkovich]

Re: ASH 2011 Multiple Myeloma Discussion - Day 1

by Boris Simkovich on Mon Dec 12, 2011 5:38 pm

Hi Gary,

Thanks for your feedback re: the updates.

Actually, as you probably know, almost all drugs go through fairly detailed blood concentration testing when they're first under development. It's painfully obvious that this is the case when you have to sit through lots of presentations about new drugs under development. Almost half of the discussion is about the different dose levels tested, concentration variation over time, dose-limiting toxicities, and the like.

We've been careful about not including too much of that discussion in the summaries we're posting for the presentations. But I assure you ... there is an INCREDIBLE amount of time and energy spent on those sorts of issues.

Back to the summaries!

- Boris.