Shaji Kumar, MD, on Stem Cell Transplantation for Patients with Myeloma

Shaji Kumar, MD, from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, discussed the importance of stem cell transplantation for patients with myeloma and the steps necessary to perform the procedure at the 2020 Transplantation & Cellular Therapy Meetings, held February 19-23, 2020 in Orlando, Florida.

Transcription:

Stem cell transplantation remains an important part of myeloma therapy in patients who are eligible to go through a stem cell transplant and this often includes patients all the way up to 75 years in age, as long as they have good performance jettison, good organ function. So, the ability to collect stem cells for autologous stem cell transplantation is important in myeloma. There are a variety of different factors that affect the ability to collect stem cells and these include the type and the duration of therapy they receive before they go to a stem cell transplant, and as well as the degree of disease control. In the younger patients, we often try to collect adequate numbers of cells for 2 to 3 stem cell transplantation, which can then be used either as tandem order transplants or salvage order transplant at the time of relapse. So, it’s important we are able to collect adequate numbers and a variety of different approaches have been tried…all of which depends on the particular clinical context.