What a year 2015 was for the myelomatologist!

The U.S. Food and Drug Admin­istra­tion (FDA) ap­prov­al of three new myeloma drugs, all within the span of a few weeks to­wards the end of the year, had already gen­er­ated great ex­cite­ment in the com­munity.

Then, sev­er­al poten­tial prac­tice-changing pre­sen­ta­tions at the 2015 American Society of He­ma­tol­ogy (ASH) annual meeting put the proverbial icing on the cake to round out a landmark year for myeloma thera­peutics.

This edition of the myeloma quiz highlights some of the key takeaways from the ASH 2015 meeting.

The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting in any given year is hit-or-miss as far as breaking research for multiple myeloma goes.

However, at ASCO 2015, there were no two views among myeloma experts. It was probably one of the most sig­nif­i­cant ASCO meetings as far as pre­senta­tions of abstracts that have the poten­tial to alter the land­scape of myeloma treat­ment in the near future.

There is no way to do justice to all the presentations at ASCO this year. However, I have tried to prepare a quiz to high­light …

A new year is upon us.  I hope it has started well for everybody, and that all had a great holiday season!

The last few weeks of 2014 were a hap­pen­ing time for the mul­ti­ple myeloma com­munity. The short span of time witnessed the pub­li­ca­tion of up­dated criteria for the diag­nosis of mul­ti­ple myeloma from the Inter­na­tional Myeloma Work­ing Group (IMWG). In addi­tion, the 56^th annual meeting of the American Society of He­ma­tol­ogy (ASH) took place in San Francisco, with literally hundreds of myeloma-related oral and poster pre­sen­ta­tions.

Therefore, it is again …

An important new concept in our understanding of multiple myeloma traces its origins back to the great nineteenth century scientist, Charles Darwin.

In his writings, Darwin described how char­acter­is­tics of animal and plant species can change over time. Slight differences in inherited char­acter­is­tics within a species, combined with variations in the en­viron­ment, can lead to certain char­acter­is­tics becoming more common in en­viron­ments favorable to those char­acter­is­tics.

A good example of what Darwin described is the range of size and shapes of beaks seen on Galápagos finches. The different beaks allow the birds …

The International Myeloma Working Group (IMWG) has issued updated criteria for the diagnosis of multiple myeloma.

The criteria have been published in The Lancet Oncology and are ac­com­panied by recommendations for monitoring and updated criteria for other related plasma cell disorders.

The new diagnostic criteria represent a paradigm shift in the approach to multiple myeloma and will have considerable impact on the management of the disease.

For decades, the diagnosis of multiple myeloma required the presence of “end-organ” damage that could be attributed to the underlying plasma cell disorder. Thus, in order …

It’s July, and we have had some time to digest the findings from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting held in Chicago May 30 through June 3.

Quite a few pre­sen­ta­tions caught one’s eye.

We finally saw the results of the much awaited PANORAMA-1 study in­ves­ti­gating the efficacy and safety of panobinostat (LBH589) plus Velcade and dexa­meth­a­sone com­pared to Velcade and dexa­meth­a­sone alone.

Exciting data on the CD38 anti­bodies daratumumab and SAR650984 continued to emerge at ASCO.

Another study looked at a pro­gres­sion-free …

The 2014 International Myeloma Working Group (IMWG) Annual Summit took place in Milan, Italy on June 9 and 10.

The summit is a special meeting organized by the International Myeloma Foun­da­tion in which leading myeloma researchers get to brainstorm col­lectively about the most pressing issues in the field, find ways to col­lab­o­rate, and plan future laboratory and clinical studies.

The IMWG summit is hailed by most attendees as the most important meeting for myeloma researchers worldwide. It is a unique opportunity for investigators in the field to engage in lively debate but, …