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 …

US Submission Designed to Support Conversion From Accelerated to Full FDA Approval and Expansion of Current Approved Indication
EMA Grants Kyprolis Accelerated Assessment and Orphan Drug Desig­na­tion

Thousand Oaks, CA and South San Francisco, CA (Press Release) – Amgen (NASDAQ:AMGN) and its sub­sid­i­ary Onyx Pharma­ceu­ticals, Inc., today announced the sub­mission of a supple­mental New Drug Application (sNDA) to the U.S. Food and Drug Admin­istra­tion (FDA) and a Marketing Authorization Ap­pli­cation (MAA) to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for Kyprolis® (car­filz­o­mib) for Injection to seek approval for the treat­ment of patients with re­lapsed multiple myeloma who have received at least one prior ther­apy. In the U.S., the sNDA is designed to sup­port the conversion of accelerated approval …

This past Sunday was the second day of the American Society of Hema­tology’s (ASH) annual meeting, which was held in San Francisco.

As on the first day of the meeting, myeloma-related pre­sen­ta­tions once again took place during several sessions through­out the day.

A myeloma-related education session held the first day of the conference was repeated once again on Sunday morning.

While the education session was being held, a separate “scientific sym­po­sium” with two oral pre­sen­ta­tions took place in parallel.  The session focused on a novel immuno­therapeutic ap­proach to treating cancer known as …

Saturday was the official first day of the 2014 American Society of Hema­tology (ASH) annual meeting. The day featured a wide range of in­ter­est­ing pre­sen­ta­tions about mul­ti­ple myeloma.

Oral pre­sen­ta­tions about new treat­ments under devel­op­ment were given mid-day and were summarized in a Beacon ASH Daily Update published yes­ter­day morn­ing.

During Saturday evening, a poster session took place where im­por­tant new re­search findings were summarized in posters dis­played throughout two separate large conference halls.

The stud­ies covered a variety of myeloma-related topics, ranging from new treat­ments being devel­oped for myeloma, com­bi­na­tion ther­a­pies …

– Data Featured as Oral Presentation at ASH 2014 –

San Francisco (Press Release) –Takeda Pharma­ceu­tical Company Limited (TSE:4502) today announced results from an open-label, Phase 2 study eval­u­ating the safety and efficacy of oral, single-agent ixazomib (MLN9708) as main­te­nance ther­apy in patients with multiple myeloma (MM) who had received ixazomib, lena­lido­mide and dexa­meth­a­sone as induction ther­apy. The data from this trial dem­onstrate the poten­tial feasibility of single-agent ixazomib main­te­nance ther­apy fol­low­ing 12 cycles of ixazomib-lenalidomide-dexamethasone, with deepening responses and an acceptable tolerability profile. These data were presented today at the 56th American Society of Hematology (ASH) …

This year’s meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) began yesterday morning in San Francisco.

Myeloma-related presentations were made during several sessions throughout the day.

The day started out with a session designed to better educate physicians about multiple myeloma and how to treat the disease.

Two sessions of oral presentations devoted solely to multiple myeloma ran simultaneously in the middle of the day. One of the sessions focused on the biology of the disease. The other one included presentations on new myeloma ther­a­pies for both newly diagnosed and re­lapsed and …

The 2014 annual meeting of the American Society of He­ma­tol­ogy (ASH) starts tomorrow, De­cem­ber 5, in San Francisco, and will con­tinue until next Tuesday.

The ASH annual meeting is one of sev­er­al large med­i­cal conferences where myeloma-related re­search findings are pre­sented each year.  However, from a mul­ti­ple myeloma perspective, the ASH meeting is generally the most im­por­tant of the meetings.

At this year’s meeting, for example, some 500 myeloma-presentations are scheduled to take place.  The pre­sen­ta­tions will summarize cur­rent re­search on a wide range of topics, in­clud­ing the biology of the dis­ease …