VIDEO: Awareness of changing landscape critical for myeloma

I think in the myeloma community, being aware of the current state of art for treatment is the most important component. And the reason is such a fast-changing field. Some of us who only work on myeloma — and I've been doing it for 3 decades — the changes that happen in say, first 20 to 25 years, are almost matched by what has happened in last 5 years. As long as the options availability, as long as the responses are concerned. I would give a very simple example. One of the important new developments in myeloma is minimal residual disease measurement, MRD assessment. We now do MRD assessment in all the patients at various stages. And main stage is when we really want to look for patients’ ultimate deep response. So, when patients get CR or in some cases VGPR, we measure MRD. And why MRD is important? Because in old days, still yesterday, the bone marrow exam we do to judge the response was able to identify one myeloma cell in 100 cells. So 1% myeloma cell, we can probably detect it. Now with the more sensitive methods we have for MRD assessment, we can identify one myeloma cell in a million. So, our depth of response has gone up 10,000 fold and all the studies done so far show that getting MRD negativity is a critical component. So awareness about what treatments are available, where we utilize them, and also awareness about where we need to go for the patients is a critical component in myeloma community. And this changes very quickly. So some of us who work on myeloma are really, it behooves on us to educate everything and everybody about moving fast moving field in a positive way.