A group of Italian researchers recently showed that consolidation therapy with Velcade, thalidomide, and dexamethasone was more effective than consolidation therapy with thalidomide and dexamethasone alone.

In particular, they found that the Velcade-based consolidation therapy yielded more high-quality responses, such as complete responses, and a high rate of molecular remission, in which patients showed no signs of remaining myeloma cells.

Dr. Michele Cavo from the Seragnoli Institute of Hematology in Bologna, Italy, presented the results at the 16^th Congress of the European Hematology Association (EHA) in London last week.

In the study, …

Results of a Phase 1 clinical trial suggest that the investigational drug LY2127399 in combination with Velcade is safe and effective enough to deserve further study as a potential treatment for multiple myeloma.

“We are very encouraged by these results and would like to move this forward to a randomized trial comparing LY2127399 and Velcade with Velcade alone,” said Dr. Noopur Raje, from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute when she presented these findings at the 47^th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) on Sunday.

Dr. Nikhil Munshi from the Dana-Farber …

I have written about the challenges and frustrations of “watchful waiting” here in the past.

I believe this is one of the most challenging aspects of living with multiple myeloma—sometimes all we can do is watch and wait for our myeloma to return.

But something exciting happened to me today, which has changed my whole attitude about this.  I would like to share the details with you now.

During a follow-up appointment with my myeloma specialist, Dr. Melissa Alsina from Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, Dr. Alsina became concerned about …

Results of a recent Italian study show that a four-drug combination regimen of Velcade, Doxil, dexamethasone, and thalidomide may be more effective than two- or three-drug combinations for multiple myeloma patients who have relapsed or are resistant to prior treatment.

“This study clearly reinforced the idea that aggressive therapy, even in the second-line relapse setting, is of great value,” said Dr. Mario Curti, a hematologist at Los Alamitos Medical Center in Los Alamitos, California, who was not involved in the study. “It allows another treatment option to be considered in the relapse …

Friday was the last day of the International Myeloma Workshop (IMW) in Paris.  The agenda for the day was briefer than the previous days of the conference.  Talks ran from the early morning through mid-afternoon.

The morning began with a session in which myeloma specialists presented consensus reports on vaccination and infection prevention, the management of anemia, blood clots in deep veins, and bone disease.  The Myeloma Beacon will be covering these reports in more detail over the next few weeks.

Throughout the rest of the morning, researchers presented results from ongoing …

Thursday was the third day of the Inter­na­tional Myeloma Workshop (IMW) in Paris.  There were pre­sen­ta­tions from early morn­ing through the evening.

Some of the highlights from the first part of Day 3 of the conference are summarized in this article.  Highlights from the sec­ond part of the day are summarized in a separate article (see re­lated Beacon news).

Treating Older, Newly Diagnosed Myeloma Patients

The first session of the morn­ing was about treating newly diag­nosed mul­ti­ple myeloma patients over the age of 65 years, spe­cif­i­cally those who are in­eli­gible for …