HealthTree Podcast for Multiple Myeloma

The University of Pennsylvania has led the charge in the US for CAR T cells for blood cancers with impressive results in leukemia. Dr. Alfred Garfall, MD was recently covered in Targeted Oncology for his research using CD19 in multiple myeloma. Learn more about the lessons learned in leukemia and how the exciting field is expanding and maturing in multiple myeloma.

Could multiple myeloma genetics give us clues into who will respond to standard treatments and who will not? Dr. Brian Van Ness, PhD of the University of Minnestota shares his study to do just that. In a collaboration between the Unversity of Minnesota and the Mayo Clinic, Dr. Van Ness will describe his study to determine who will respond to treatment (or not) even before the treatment is given. Learn more about how standard therapies can be effectively used in this important show.

The measles virus used successfully for a patient with relapsed myeloma is now a well known and exciting story shared on maintstream media. Dr. Frits van Rhee MD PhD MRCP,  FRCPath and Dr. Stephen Russell, MD PhD FRCP, FRCPath take the success one step further with a Phase II trial of the measles virus with further engineering in patients with relapsed/refractory, high-risk multiple myeloma. Their work will help determine which patients will respond to the treatment and which ones will not and will also determine how to make the therapy more effective.

CAR T cell therapy is a new and exciting potential treatment approach in blood cancers. It is a highly personalized treatment because the patient's own T-cells are redirected to erradicate cancerous cells after a single infusion, allowing patients to avoid the chronic side effects of long-term, toxic chemoradiotherapy. Learn more about Dr. Hermann Einsele, MD and Dr. Michael Huedecek, MD's work at the University of  Würzburg, Germany to use a CAR T cell therapy targeting the CS1 protein commonly found on myeloma cells.

UAMS has led the way in studying the biology of myeloma cells to find new therapies. We now know that multiple myeloma patients can have a variety of types of myeloma cells at the time they are diagnosed - some with more aggressive features than others. Researchers have found that patients with several different types of myeloma cells at diagnosis seem to have early relapse and shorter survival while patients with one dominant type of myeloma cell tend to do better. Learn what Dr. Gareth Morgan, MD, FRCP, FRCPath, PhD, Dr. Niels Weinhold, PhD and Dr. Christoph Hueck are doing to find out which clones are the most aggressive and which therapies increase the mutation rate, leading to a more resistant myeloma clone.

Patients who have high-risk genetic features like the 14;16 translocation need new treatment options. Dr. Carmen Baldino of Jasco Pharmaceuticals and Dr. Kelvin Lee of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute are working on a potentially curative solution for patients with this high-risk translocation using a PIM2 Kinase inhibitor called JP-11646. Learn more about this proposal for the Myeloma Crowd Research Initiative to address the unmet needs for high-risk patients.

Myeloma is not a single disease. Two types of high-risk myeloma have swapped chromosomes (14;16) and (14;20) have notoriously short survival times with conventional treatments and are found to be resistant to bortezomib, one of the standard myeloma therapies. Dr. Frank Zhan, MD, PhD of the University of Iowa searched a genetic database to identify 100 genes uniquely deregulated for these two types of myeloma. Based on database matching to find compounds that induce or reverse desired gene changes, he found 5 targets to affect the c-MAF and MAFB genes that are disregulated by these translocations. They found that only Alsterpaullon (ALP) significantly inhibits MM cell growth with “spike” expression of either c-MAF or MAFB. ALP is a cyclindependent kinase (CDK) inhibitor and blocks cell-cycle progression. However, the reasons for its antiproliferative effects is unknown. The research will test whether ALP is able to disable c-MAF/MAFB signaling events, thus rendering MM responsive to chemotherapeutics. Join us for this 6th show of the Myeloma Crowd Research Initiative with Dr. Frank Zhan, MD, PhD and Dr. Guido Tricot, MD, PhD to discuss a potential solution for these patients in a truly personalized medicine fashion.

Dr. Ivan Borrello, MD of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, joins us as part of the top 10 projects selected by the Myeloma Crowd Research Initiative. He shares his pioneering work using patients' own immune cells to fight their cancer. His group leads the research for this type of immunotherapy, called adaptive T-cell therapy with MILS (marrow infiltrating lymphocytes). This vaccine is a version for multiple myeloma of those already successful to treat pancreas, prostate and breast cancers. Learn more about this important work in his upcoming study in multiple myeloma.

Join us for our fourth episode of the new Myeloma Crowd Research Initiative of the proposals under consideration for the MCRI patient-led funding initiative. Dr. Bruno Paiva, PhD,  is a multiple myeloma researcher from the University of Navarra Spain specializing in minimal residual disease (MRD) detection using flow cytometry. What does the newer MRD testing mean for high-risk patients? Dr. Paiva will describe his new study to find more clues and therefore better treatments for high-risk patients.

The third in our Myeloma Crowd Radio series for the new Myeloma Crowd Research Initiative (MCRI), we talk with Dr. Robert Orlowski, MD, PhD at MD Anderson Cancer Center about work being done specifically for the highest risk multiple myeloma patients with del17p.  This is a genetic feature with historically poor outcomes. Learn more about the hypothesis that the biology of del17p could be influenced to introducing genes normally repressed by p53 that would create molecular vulnerabilities and result in new targets to improve outcomes.  Special thanks to our Myeloma Crowd Radio episode sponsor, Takeda Oncology.