The International Myeloma Foundation's Asian Myeloma Network

This week's "Ask Dr. Durie" comes from a patient who has heard that there will be an immense summit in Bangkok. The question is, what is this AMN summit and how important is that for the myeloma community? Very, very good questions. So, first of all, AMN is the Asian Myeloma Network. 

This is a network of collaboration between seven countries in Asia that was started in 2012. And the seven countries are Singapore, Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. And since then, other countries have been added, three other countries Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines. 

The purpose of this group is to bring together these groups in a collaborative way to understand myeloma in Asia as a basis to offer the very best treatment for patients with myeloma in this huge area of the world where actually there are more patients with myeloma than anywhere else on the planet. 

And so, there is a desire to understand the disease, to educate the doctors, to support patients, and most importantly, to conduct clinical trials. The idea of the clinical trials is to make early new, exciting therapies available to patients throughout Asia, where approval, commercial approval of these types of drugs might be very much delayed. 

And so, the idea is to attempt to improve outcomes for patients in Asia by improving access to these exciting new therapies. 

At the summit, there are several things which are part of the summit. First of all, there is a master class to educate the younger doctors in Asia. Then there is a patient support program to help provide day-to-day support at the patient level. And then there is a scientific meeting, where the clinical trials which are being proposed and the scientific research, being conducted throughout Asia is presented and discussed by the members of the Asian expert community. And so, this is a very, very important meeting for patients in Asia, for doctors in Asia to be able to offer the very best therapies for their patients. However, in addition to that, because of the very active research program, the Asian community is now at a level where they can contribute significantly to the global myeloma community. Five clinical trials have been completed. One or two have been published already. 

There are five more ongoing trials out of this. The Asian research community can contribute to the global knowledge about myeloma and offer insights and recommendations about the best options and sequencing and combination of drugs, which is a part of the global myeloma knowledge base. 

And so, the BOTTOM LINE is that the AMN summit is a very important meeting where the experts get together, discuss what has been achieved in the recent years and plan for the next activities, the next research activities, clinical trials, education, master class programs, and also patient support activities.