VIDEO: Addressing relapse in ultra high-risk patients unmet need in multiple myeloma

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I think the challenges, we've come a very long way in myeloma, we have a lot of therapeutic agents, but there still tends to be a few areas where we still have a ways to go. I think one of those is in high-risk patients, and particularly, ultra high-risk patients, and we define this by the number of cytogenetic abnormalities or certain disease biology characteristics of a patient's myeloma. And no matter what we do, no matter how many new therapeutic agents we have and try to sequence, there are still a subset of patients who tend to relapse regardless of what we do, regardless if we use different induction, if we use a transplant, a double transplant, you know, optimize maintenance strategy. So I think that's still an unmet need.

I think we have now potentially the tools in terms of some of these novel therapies that I just described to get better responses, but it's about how we use those drugs and those patients, and also how we best identify those patients. I think another unmet need is sequencing. So when we have all these new therapies, how do we best use them in what order to really optimize response, which a lot of clinical trials are looking at right now. And I think one more space we're probably still a ways to go is the transplant ineligible space. Like I mentioned, we have a lot of trials looking at that, but I think there's still further investigation to be done to figure out what drugs we should best use for those patients to make sure that we, yes, are giving patients that survival benefit, but also enhancing and improving their quality of life.