Ken Shain, MD, PhD, discussed some of the research in multiple myeloma that was featured in a recent FaceOff program, and how these recent advances may change the standard of care.
Transcript:
So essentially, we spoke mostly about changing paradigms in taking care of disease, with high-risk disease being a critical component of [the discussion]. How do we start working on that? We presented a study looking at the integration of a novel monoclonal antibody with carfilzomib [Kyprolis], lenalidomide [Revlimid], and dexamethasone by a German group.
[Regarding] the other abstracts, we focused on [the question of]: can we take real world data, and draw conclusions from them? How does it help us make decisions about how our paradigms are being applied to the community?
From the perspective of high-risk disease, we still have a long way to go, although we’ve made some improvements. We probably still haven’t identified the optimal therapies, but this is a way to go: multimodality, multi-drug therapy, [specifically] quadruplet therapy.
The more challenging question is: what do the real-world data look like? Are they reflections of what the regimens look like in the community, or of the patients treated in the community, or of a lack of education in our community physicians? [Is it a practical inability to] treat patients the way we think they should be treated, based on clinical data?
Those are all unknowns.
Transcript edited for clarity.