Results of a retro­spec­tive­ study conducted at the Mayo Clinic indicate that multiple myeloma patients who respond more gradually to their initial treat­ment may have better over­all survival.

Specifically, the authors of the new study find that newly diag­nosed patients who required more than 120 days to achieve their best response to initial treat­ment had better pro­gres­sion-free and over­all survival than patients who achieved their best response in 120 days or less.

The five-year survival rate was 77 per­cent for patients who achieved their best response to initial treat­ment in more than …

Over the last year or two, I have seen an increasing number of patients with multiple myeloma who are deeply worried that they have “failed” treatment because they are not in “complete response” (CR).  This phe­nom­e­non is gaining further steam with recent interest in “minimal re­sid­ual disease” (MRD).

In fact, with numerous educational programs, daily emails, and ubiqui­tous lectures touting a new regimen with even higher complete re­sponse rates, I am now almost as worried as them. Of course, the cause of my worry is not that patients have not achieved the …

Results from a recent clinical study suggest that a new type of response, called an immunophenotypic response, strongly predicts disease progression in elderly multiple myeloma patients. Patients who achieved an immunophenotypic response had superior progression-free survival than patients who achieved a complete response or stringent complete response.

The authors suggested that testing for these three types of responses provides complementary information and that effort should be made to refine response criteria for multiple myeloma.

A number of previous studies have shown that achieving a complete response, which is defined by no detectable …

Spanish researchers recently published long-term follow-up results confirming that a complete response following stem cell transplantation in multiple myeloma patients increases overall and progression-free survival compared to a very good or partial response.

Treatment with high-dose chemotherapy followed by stem cell transplantation is a standard therapeutic approach for younger, newly diagnosed multiple myeloma patients. There has been some debate among researchers, however, as to whether the quality of response following transplantation can predict patient outcome.

In 2000, the same group of researchers published results demonstrating that complete response should be an important …

The year 2009 brought a lot of new and ex­cit­ing ad­vancements in the field of mul­ti­ple myeloma. Over the course of 2009, The Myeloma Beacon covered more than 100 im­por­tant myeloma-related stud­ies.

To highlight the most im­por­tant of these stud­ies, the Myeloma Beacon surveyed lead­ing physicians and re­searchers in the field. These physicians and re­searchers were asked to name the three peer reviewed journal articles pub­lished in 2009 and the three conference abstracts from 2009 that have the most im­por­tant findings or implications relating to mul­ti­ple myeloma.

The top three journal …