Dr. Kenneth Anderson, a world-renowned myeloma spe­cialist, physician and re­searcher at Dana-Farber Cancer In­sti­tute, and Kraft Family Pro­fessor at Harvard Medical School, spoke with The Myeloma Beacon about his ap­proach to treating mul­ti­ple myeloma patients.

This article is the sec­ond part of a two-part series based on The Myeloma Beacon’s interview with Dr. Anderson.  It will cover Dr. Anderson’s thoughts on where myeloma treat­ment is headed in the com­ing years.  For more in­­for­ma­tion on Dr. Anderson’s cur­rent ap­proach to treating mul­ti­ple myeloma, please see part one of this series.

Emerging Therapies …

The results of a number of clinical trials for the treatment of multiple myeloma with Zolinza were presented at the American Society of Hematology (ASH) 2010 annual meeting. The trials, ranging from Phase 1 to Phase 3, studied Zolinza in combination with a variety of approved myeloma drugs for the treatment of both early and advanced stages of the disease.

Zolinza (vorinostat) is manufactured by Merck Pharmaceuticals.  It is currently approved for a certain type of lymphoma and is being investigated as a treatment for multiple myeloma (see related Beacon …

Description:

Zolinza (news articles), which is an approved drug for cutaneous T-cell lymphoma, is also being studied in combination with Velcade (bortezomib) for treatment of multiple myeloma. Zolinza is a histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor, which modifies the …

A Phase 1 clinical trial recently reported in the journal Clinical Cancer Research indicated that the novel drug combination of Velcade (bortezomib) and Zolinza (vorinostat) may be effective in patients with relapsed or refractory myeloma.

Previous preclinical results suggested that Zolinza enhances Velcade’s therapeutic effect. However, this is the first clinical trial to describe the combination of a histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor (Zolinza) and a proteasome inhibitor (Velcade) in heavily pre-treated relapsed or refractory myeloma patients.

The Phase 1 clinical trial monitored 23 patients with relapsed and/or refractory …