For elderly myeloma patients or patients ineligible for a stem cell transplant, a traditional frontline therapy has been the “MP” combination of the chemotherapy drug melphalan and the corticosteroid prednisone.

Recent clinical trials, however, have combined highly effective, newer treatments such as Velcade (bortezomib), thalidomide (Thalomid), and Revlimid (lenalidomide) with the standard MP regimen in the hope of finding improved response and survival rates.

This Monday at the 50th annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH), researchers presented updated results of a Phase 3 …

Researchers have achieved major strides in the treatment of multiple myeloma in the last ten years with the use of drugs such as thalidomide (marketed as Thalomid), Revlimid (lenalidomide), and Velcade (bortezomib). In conjunction with high-dose chemotherapy and stem cell transplantation, these various therapeutic options have increased patients’ treatment response and remission rates.

In a recent clinical trial involving Total Treatment 3 (TT3), 80% of patients who received up-front chemotherapy, transplantation, thalidomide, and Velcade achieved nearly complete remission. Of those, 90% have …

Lenalidomide (initially known as CC-5013 and marketed as Revlimid by Celgene) is a derivative of thalidomide introduced in 2004. It was initially intended as a treatment for multiple myeloma, for which thalidomide is an accepted therapeutic modality, but has also shown efficacy in the hematological disorders known as the myelodysplastic syndromes. [...]

Bortezomib (originally PS-341 and marketed as Velcade by Millennium Pharmaceuticals) is the first therapeutic proteasome inhibitor to be tested in humans. It is approved in the U.S. for treating relapsed multiple myeloma and mantle cell lymphoma. In multiple myeloma, complete clinical responses have been obtained in patients with otherwise refractory or rapidly advancing disease. [...]