While I am not so much a creature of habit, my Wednesday afternoon activities over the last three years have been pretty much chiseled in stone.

At around noon on a typical Wednesday, I drop everything that I’m doing, jump into my car, drive across the Kimberling City Bridge that sits perched 30 feet above beautiful Table Rock Lake, and then wind my way through the rolling Ozark hills and picturesque hollows toward the nationally known tourist and entertainment small city of Branson, Missouri.

Upon arrival at my destination, I am normally …

A recent study demonstrates that better treatments are still needed for multiple myeloma patients who develop extramedullary disease.  Specifically, the results show that these patients have poorer progression-free survival and overall survival compared to patients without extramedullary disease.

The results also show that extramedullary disease is more common in patients with high-risk multiple myeloma.

Extramedullary disease occurs when multiple myeloma cells develop in the soft tissues and organs outside of the bone marrow. It can occur in newly diagnosed myeloma, but it is more commonly found when myeloma relapses (see related

Yesterday -- Saturday, June 5 -- was the sec­ond day of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2010 annual meeting in Chicago.  It was a busy day in terms of re­search posters and pre­sen­ta­tions re­lated to mul­ti­ple myeloma.  As a re­­sult, there is a lot of ground to cover in this up­date.

Almost 40 myeloma-related posters were up for meeting attendees to view during the daytime poster session on "lymphoma and plasma cell disorders."  Among those 40-or-so posters, six con­cerned re­search done by the myeloma team at the Uni­ver­sity of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), …

A recent paper published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology updated the outcomes of multiple myeloma trials conducted by the Intergroupe Francophone du Myelome, the Southwest Oncology Group, and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

The update provides a fuller, long-term picture of the advantages of some of the autotransplant regimens being tested. It represents the first international effort at systematically updating previously reported trial results, which had indicated that autotransplantation with high-dose melphalan (Alkeran) therapy significantly extends the survival of multiple myeloma patients.

Autologous stem cell transplantation, or autotransplantation, …

A recent study confirmed that the multi-drug regimen known as Total Therapy 3 (TT3) has a high response rate for newly diagnosed multiple myeloma patients. The study was conducted by physicians at the University of Arkansas Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy and was published in the journal Blood.

The term “Total Therapy” indicates the use of all therapeutic agents and methods of treatment that have been shown to be effective against the disease. The Myeloma Beacon previously reported on a series of total therapies, including TT3, and the high success …

At the Second International Congress on Leukemia, Lymphoma, and Myeloma, recently held in Istanbul, Turkey, researchers summarized the clinical results of Total Therapy trials. Total Therapy, which combines multiple-drug regimens with stem cell transplants, represents significant progress in the fight against myeloma, and its high success rates hold promise for an eventual cure.

In the Total Therapy 1 (TT1) trial, patients received chemotherapy drug regimens of VAD, CTX (cyclophosphamide), and EDAP, as well as the chemotherapeutic agent melphalan (Alkeran), to destroy cancer cells in preparation for stem cell transplant. After undergoing …