Significant improvements in donor stem cell trans­planta­tion have been made in recent years. As a result, donor trans­planta­tion – a procedure during which a patient receives stem cells from a healthy donor – has become safer and typically more successful for patients.

The majority of patients undergoing donor stem cell trans­planta­tion receive stem cells from unrelated donors. In these cases, a close match between donor and recipient tissue types is known to play an important important role in trans­plant outcomes.

A group of German researchers last fall published results of a large …

A group of Spanish researchers published a summary last year of the patterns of re­lapse and progression they observed in multiple myeloma patients who underwent stem cell trans­plan­ta­tion as part of their upfront therapy.

The researchers observed re­lapse in over half of the patients included in the study.  Among these patients, the majority had only achieved a partial re­sponse after trans­plan­ta­tion.

They also found that how a patient re­lapsed had an impact on their prog­nosis after re­lapse.  Patients who re­lapsed based solely on changes in disease markers, such as their M-spike level, …

Results of several studies investigating Revlimid main­te­nance ther­a­py for mul­ti­ple myeloma will be presented at this year’s American Society of Hema­tol­ogy (ASH) annual meeting, which starts later this week.

Today’s article previews the results of the key Revlimid main­te­nance studies that will be presented at the meeting, drawing on findings pub­lished in the meeting abstracts.  Some of the study results, it should be noted, will be updated during the presentations at ASH this week and early next week.

The results to be presented at ASH are unlikely to settle the ongoing debate …

As The Beacon continues its ‘ASH Preview’ series about myeloma re­search that will be presented at the American Society of Hematology (ASH) meeting in early December, this article focuses on novel im­muno­therapy approaches that are being studied in clinical trials.

Abstracts for the ASH presentations are now available, although many contain pre­lim­i­nary information that will be updated at the meet­ing.

The Beacon’s ASH preview articles are intended to highlight the meet­ing’s most interesting myeloma-related studies.

The first several of the preview articles, which were published over the past …

Findings from a recent retrospective study conducted at the Mayo Clinic indicate that autologous stem cell trans­plan­ta­tion is an effective treat­ment option for multiple myeloma patients with advanced kid­ney disease.

The majority of patients (87 percent) responded to the treatment, with 40 percent achieving a complete response.  According to the researchers, this complete response rate is similar to those seen in other studies of stem cell trans­plan­ta­tion for myeloma patients with kid­ney disease.

However, the researchers found little evidence that trans­plan­ta­tion sig­nif­i­cant­ly improves kid­ney function in patients with advanced kid­ney dis­ease. Among …

Results from a retrospective study demonstrate that a set of protein bio­markers found in urine can be used to predict the development of acute graft-versus-host disease in patients who undergo donor stem cell trans­plan­ta­tion.

During the study, levels of specific urine proteins were used to generate a "classi­fication factor," named aGvHD_MS17, designed to predict a pa­tient's probability of developing acute graft-versus-host disease (GVHD).

The study's findings may allow for early detection and preemptive treat­ment of acute GVHD, a potentially fatal complication that can occur after trans­plan­ta­tion using donor stem cells.

“The most …

Results from a recent study indicate that collecting more stem cells prior to a myeloma patient’s first transplant may be beneficial for future trans­plants.

Specifically, relapsed patients who received a second transplant with cells that had been collected prior to their first transplant, rather than those collected following the first transplant, had a lower risk of later developing myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS).

MDS is a group of blood disorders marked by ineffective production of blood cells.  MDS often progresses to acute myeloid leukemia, an ag­gres­sive blood cancer in which the body overproduces abnormal …