VIDEO: Multiple myeloma highlights from ASCO 2022

Editor’s note: This is a previously posted video, and the below is an automatically generated transcript to be used for informational purposes. Please notify editor@healio.com if there are concerns regarding accuracy of the transcription.

There were multiple highlights from this annual ASCO meeting, especially one of the plenary sessions actually was on myeloma, a presentation on the DETERMINATION study which was a study to assess the role of autologous stem cell transplant after high-dose therapy with melphalan in patients with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma who received triplet therapy with REVLIMID-VELCADE-dexamethasone and got their stem cell collected. Some of them underwent early transplantation and some of them underwent late transplantation if needed. Ultimately those patients were followed for a long period of time; the study enrolled patients more than 10 years ago. And what they reported is that early transplant did not improve overall survival, though it approximately provided 21 months of regression-free survival for the autologous transplant group. Something that we knew from before, that regression-free survival gets better with autologous stem cell transplant and overall survival did not show any difference between both groups. We also learned that autologous stem cell transplant did affect quality of life on the short term, though that got better after follow-up and patient got back to their baseline after a transient quality-of-life metrics drop. Moreover also we learned about other malignancies that may happen after a high dose chemotherapy melphalan including myeloid malignancies that occurred more frequently in the transplant group where a lymphoid malignancy, acute lymphoblastic leukemia, were reported to be higher in the REVLIMID maintenance group in the patients who did not receive transplant. So this study was important in many dimensions, first that it proved the concept that transplant can control myeloma for a long period of time. It also provide a concept on the quality-of-life metrics that drop with transplant as expected and gets better after that and on the long-term follow-up on the risk of malignancies. So it will help inform patients and physicians when they do those discussions, patients with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma. The other things in ASCO that also brought attention is there were multiple oral poster presentations mainly focused on the new immune-based therapies, CAR T cell therapy and bispecific antibody therapies. We also seen some real world data on CAR T therapy, which is a relatively new thing we're doing for myeloma patients and also were a lot like long follow-up for the CAR T studies that initially reported few years ago. So those were also interested to look at.