Good morning, myeloma world.

We hope you had a pleasant weekend and that your new week is off to a good start.

The big news today is that Darzalex (daratumumab) has been approved in Europe as a new treatment for multiple myeloma. We will be pub­lish­ing a separate news article on the approval, which was announced a few hours ago. In the mean­time, you can find information about the approval in this press release from Genmab, the company that initially developed Darzalex.

The other news we have for you …

An international panel of multiple myeloma experts, known as the Inter­national Myeloma Working Group (IMWG), recently released a consen­sus statement on risk stratification for patients with multiple myeloma.

Risk stratification refers to the classification of patients into different cate­gories based on likely disease outcome.

The new IMWG risk stratification, for example, has three risk categories: low-risk, standard-risk, and high-risk.

In the new system, determination of a patient's risk classification is based on three factors: a patient's disease stage according to the Inter­national Staging System (ISS); the presence of certain chromosomal abnormalities in …

Results from a recent retrospective study suggest that smoldering myeloma patients with a high percentage of plasma cells in the blood are more likely to progress to active myeloma within two years of diagnosis, as compared to patients with a lower percentage of plasma cells.

Patients with more than 5 billion plasma cells per liter of blood or more than 5 percent of their blood cells in the blood being plasma cells were defined as having a ‘high percentage’ of plasma cells in the blood.

“[Our results suggest that] if patients with …

Results from a recent French study identified several factors that predict long-term survival of patients newly diagnosed with multiple myeloma. These prognostic factors include the absence of three key chromosomal abnormalities, low beta-2 microglobulin levels in the blood, and younger age.

The three key chromosomal abnormalities that were absent in patients who survived longer were a gain in chromosome 1 (called 1q gain), a translocation from chromosome 4 to 14 (called t(4;14)), and a deletion in chromosome 17 (called del(17p)). Patients who lived longer were also younger than 55 years of age …