Tuesday was the last day of the American Society of He­ma­tol­ogy annual meeting in Orlando.  The myeloma portion of the conference concluded with one session of talks in the morn­ing about treat­ments under devel­op­ment.

The first talk was given by Dr. David Siegel of Hackensack Uni­ver­sity Medical Center in New Jersey.  Dr. Siegel pre­sented re­­sults from a study of single-agent carfilzomib in myeloma patients who had re­lapsed mul­ti­ple times and did not respond to their last treat­ment (abstract).

Among the 257 evaluable par­tic­i­pants, 24 per­cent achieved at least a partial …

This Monday was the third full day of the American Society of Hematology 2010 annual meeting, and it was packed with multiple myeloma-related presentations.  The Beacon published an update earlier today covering presentations made Monday morning.  This article covers material from Monday afternoon and evening.

The first presentation of the afternoon was by Dr. Ruben Niesvizky of the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York.  He reported on the results of a Phase 3 trial using Velcade (bor­tez­o­mib)-based initial treat­ment (induction) regi­mens com­bined with weekly Velcade main­te­nance ther­apy (abstract).

Patients in this trial were newly …

According to the results of a large Phase 3 clinical trial, Zometa increases overall and progression-free survival rates among multiple myeloma patients compared to Bonefos and is more effective in preventing bone loss and fractures.  Additonally, the trial found that inclusion of thalidomide as part of an induction regimen further improved responses. 

Dr. Gareth Morgan of the Royal Marsden Hospital in London presented the results, recently published in The Lancet (abstract), at the American Society of Hematology (ASH) annual meeting in Orlando today.

“I think it is incredibly compelling that the …

Monday was the third full day of “ASH 2010,” this year’s annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology.  This day was the busiest of the entire meeting in terms of multiple myeloma-related material.  Presentations summarizing the latest myeloma research stretched from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m.

The morning presentations from Monday will be covered in this update, and presentations from the afternoon and evening will be covered in another update later today.

The day featured a large number of presentations and posters about Velcade (bortezomib), examining its use in …

Pomalidomide has demonstrated efficacy in heavily pre-treated multiple myeloma patients who have been treated with – or are even refractory to – Revlimid and Velcade.

Three studies of the use of pomalidomide (Pomalyst) in relapsed and refractory multiple myeloma patients were presented yesterday at the American Society of Hematology annual meeting in Orlando.

Pomalidomide, which is being developed by the pharmaceutical company Celgene, is an immunomodulatory agent that induces the immune system to destroy myeloma cells. It belongs to the same class of drugs as Revlimid (lenalidomide) and thalidomide (Thalomid). …

Interim results of a Phase 3 trial show no statistically significant differ­ences in relapse and overall survival rates between multiple myeloma patients who received a donor stem cell transplant as their second transplant compared to patients receiving two sequential transplants with their own stem cells.

Patients who received a donor transplant had an increased risk of death and other serious side effects, which outweighed the therapeutic benefits of the procedure.

The results of the trial were presented yesterday by Dr. Amrita Krishnan from the City of Hope Cancer Center in Duarte, California, at the American Society of …

Yesterday was the second full day of the 2010 American Society of Hematology annual meeting in Orlando. It was a particularly busy day in terms of material related to multiple myeloma, with numerous oral presentations during the day and an extensive poster session in the early evening.

One of the first presentations of the day was actually a press conference held to review the results of a Phase 3 study comparing the efficacy and safety of two different stem cell transplant regimens for multiple myeloma (abstract).

In one arm of this …