Dr. Joseph Mikhael:
Recently, the US FDA approved the four-drug combination of daratumumab, bortezomib, lenalidomide, and dexamethasone for frontline therapy in patients with multiple myeloma. Why is this so important?
Hi, everybody. Dr. Joseph Mikhael here, Chief Medical Officer of the International Myeloma Foundation. This FDA approval is big news in multiple myeloma. We've been using this four-drug combination for a while, testing it out and understanding its benefit to patients. But now with this FDA approval, we're going to see it used much more broadly across the country and likely across the world. It's important because with this combination, we've seen patients get into a deeper and a more durable remission than any prior combination we've had before. We've learned how important it is that we control myeloma from the very beginning. And what we do at the start of someone's myeloma diagnosis affects them for the rest of their life. So this kind of approval is really important to us, and we hope is going to have great implications across the country.
I think it signals to us that we'll likely see other four-drug combinations even in those patients that aren't going to autologous stem cell transplant. Lastly, we also remember this does mean more drug for patients. So we have to be very careful in managing the side effects. But paradoxically, this might mean less treatment over time because if we can control the disease upfront with this four-drug combination more effectively, patients may be able to stop their therapy earlier.
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