Health Professional Version

Health Professional Version

Find answers to some of the most commonly asked questions about multiple myeloma from nurses and patients.

Our faculty will review the importance of MRD for multiple myeloma patients and strategies to reach and stay MRD negative. This webinar will provide timely information to keep patients and caregivers up to date on the important progress being made in myeloma today, help them communicate more effectively with their health care team, and empower them to achieve the best possible outcome for their disease.

This webinar provides the multidisciplinary cancer team with important and practical information for the assessment of MRD as part of routine clinical practice for their patients with CLL. The presentation will be valuable for understanding the impact of MRD on treatment decisions and practice patterns, which has promise to lead to major improvements in outcomes for CLL patients in the very near future.

The series is designed to provide clinicians and researchers in hematology foundational information on the latest technologies available [including MRD] for data acquisition, diagnosis, and decision making for hematologic diseases.

John Gribben of Barts Cancer Institute, London, UK, chairs an insightful discussion with Barbara Eichhorst of the University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany, Susan O�Brien of the University of California, Irvine, CA, and Matthew Davids of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, on the latest CLL updates from the recent Virtual ASCO and EHA 2020 Meetings. The speakers discuss frontline therapy for CLL, BTK inhibitors, novel combination therapies and the importance of measurable residual disease (MRD) assessment. Treatment sequencing and novel therapies, in particular CAR T-cell approaches were also discussed.

Natalie Callander, MD, of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, Madison, WI, Luciano Costa, MD, PhD, of the UAB School of Medicine, Birmingham, AL, Fredrik Schjesvold, MD, PhD, of the Oslo Myeloma Center Oslo University, Oslo, Norway, Lanny Kirsch, MD, Senior Vice President in Translational Medicine at Adaptive Biotechnologies, Seattle, WA, and Philippe Moreau, MD, of the Nantes University Hospital, Nantes, France, discuss the latest data on the use of MRD in the management and treatment of multiple myeloma, as presented at the 18th International Myeloma Workshop (IMW 2021).

Bruno Paiva, PhD, of the University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain, Noemi Puig, MD, PhD, of the University Hospital Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain, and Benjamin Derman, MD, of the University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, discuss key research, presented at this year�s Congress of the European Hematology Association (EHA 2021), investigating the role of MRD in the management of multiple myeloma.

Nitin Jain, MD, of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, and Anthony Mato, MD, and Meghan Thompson, MD, both from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, discuss some of the latest updates in CLL treatment presented at this year�s virtual American Society of Hematology (ASH) meeting.

CLL is a disorder characterized by morphologically mature but immunologically less mature lymphocytes, which accumulate in the bone marrow, lymphatic tissue and blood. CLL generally affects the older population and is incurable, however, several novel treatment approaches have developed to improve outcomes of patients with CLL and there is an increasing use of MRD in disease monitoring. In this podcast, Lydia Scarf�, of Vita-Salute San Raffaele University & IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy, Othman Al-Sawaf of the University Hospital of Cologne, Cologne, Germany, and Tanya Siddiqi, from City of Hope, Duarte, CA discuss key developments in the treatment of CLL presented at this years EHA meeting.

Dr. Jeffrey Wolf, from the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of California San Francisco, explains what MRD is, how providers can explain the role of MRD to patients, including understanding the tests used, how to counsel patients when there is MRD, where testing is done for patients treated in the community, the way MRD test results will be used in the future, and so much more.

Featuring an interview with Dr Steven Coutre on the following topics: Front-line treatment of CLL (0:00) Recent data with ibrutinib-based regimens as first-line therapy for CLL (5:31) Results of the Phase III ELEVATE-TN study evaluating the efficacy and safety of acalabrutinib with obinutuzumab compared to acalabrutinib alone or obinutuzumab with chlorambucil for treatment-naive CLL (14:22) Case: A man in his late 70s experiences atrial fibrillation after receiving ibrutinib as first-line treatment for CLL (19:08) Case: A woman in her early 60s develops arthralgias after treatment with ibrutinib for CLL (25:08) Case: A man in his early 70s receiving ibrutinib for CLL experiences easy bruising on his forearms (27:28) Results from the CLL14 trial evaluating the addition of venetoclax versus chlorambucil to obinutuzumab for patients with previously untreated CLL and coexisting medical conditions (32:06) Monitoring and management of tumor lysis syndrome (TLS) in patients receiving venetoclax (37:07) Impact of minimal residual disease (MRD) assessment on outcomes for patients with CLL (41:26) Spectrum of adverse events with Bruton tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitors for CLL (46:22) CME information and select publications.

Featuring discussions on the role of minimal residual disease evaluation in the management of multiple myeloma and chronic lymphocytic leukemia with Drs Shaji Kumar and Philip Thompson, moderated by Dr Neil Love.

In this episode, we will review a study that shows that non-invasive imaging of T cell metabolic activity can detect early graft-versus-host disease after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, learn more about how detailed assessment of measurable residual disease in multiple myeloma can better define outcomes and how treatment resistance arises, and finally, examine the mechanism of action and pharmacokinetics of Ciraparantag, a small molecule being developed to rapidly reverse the effects of anticoagulants.

Of all the hematologic malignancies, multiple myeloma has one of the greatest disparities in incidence and prevalence, with incidence in African American patients more than twice that in white patients. These podcasts will teach clinicians culturally sensitive approaches for management of multiple myeloma in African Americans, how to address barriers due to racial disparities, and strategies to implement newly gained knowledge for the best outcomes of African American patients with multiple myeloma.

In this retrospective study, we present the results from a multinational and multicenter series of 400 patients with MRD monitoring during front-line therapy with the aim of exploring how clinical decisions made based on those MRD results affected outcomes...Herein, we find that MRD is useful in guiding clinical decisions during initial therapy and has a positive impact on PFS in MM patients. This potentially opens a new dimension for the use of MRD in MM, but this role still remains to be confirmed in prospective, randomized clinical trials.

This review article presents "the work of an international, multidisciplinary, 174-member panel convened to identify critical questions on key issues pertaining to MRD in chronic lymphocytic leukemia, review evaluable data, develop unified answers in conjunction with local expert input, and provide recommendations for future studies. Recommendations are presented regarding methodology for MRD determination, assay requirements and in which tissue to assess MRD, timing and frequency of assessment, use of MRD in clinical practice versus clinical trials, and the future usefulness of MRD assessment.

Advanced practitioners should be cognizant of how MRD is defined, measured, and may be applied to therapeutic decision-making in the clinical management of CLL. This brief summary from the 2020 Society of Hematological Oncology (SOHO) meeting covers MRD methods, data, and considerations for advanced practice providers.

The landscape of multiple myeloma has changed considerably in the past two decades regarding new treatments, insight into disease biology and innovation in the techniques available to assess MRD as the most accurate method to evaluate treatment efficacy. The sensitivity and standardization achieved by these techniques together with unprecedented rates of CR induced by new regimens, raised enormous interest in MRD as a surrogate biomarker of patients� outcome and endpoint in clinical trials. By contrast, there is reluctance and general lack of consensus on how to use MRD outside clinical trials. Here, we discuss critical aspects related with the implementation of MRD in clinical practice.