The Latest Research in Multiple Myeloma, Leukemia and Other Blood Cancers

Cancer research, multiple myeloma
Irene Ghobrial, MD

The last two years have been very exciting for blood cancer research; many new targeted therapies and immunotherapies are improving treatment outcomes for patients with lymphoma, leukemia and multiple myeloma.

“We’re starting to see a lot of hematologic malignancies benefit from immunotherapy,” says Irene Ghobrial, MD. “The excitement is there for so many trials and several new drug combinations that are being tested right now.”

Ghobrial recently joined Matthew Davids, MD, for a live video webchat on the latest in blood cancer research. Ghobrial and Davids, who are both medical oncologists and researchers with Dana-Farber’s Hematologic Oncology Treatment Center, discussed new treatments and clinical trials, as well as highlights from the recent American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting.

Two focus areas for Davids and Ghobrial, chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and multiple myeloma, have seen a surge in new treatments. Six new drugs have been approved for these two diseases in the last two years alone, and more are in the pipeline.

“In CLL, we’ve had several exciting new drugs come along that are mainly monotherapy (one drug at a time), but the future is going to be combining drugs,” Davids says. “We don’t know yet if it’s better to combine these new (monotherapeutic) drugs with each other or with chemotherapy, but I think both strategies should be explored and that’s what we’re looking at now.”

Learn more by watching a recording of the webchat below: