ASH Annual Meeting and Exposition

The landscape of multiple myeloma continues to shift with more drug approvals, but pivotal results out of the 2016 ASH Annual Meeting will likely alter it even further.

Sattva S. Neelapu, MD, associate professor, Department of Lymphoma/Myeloma, Division of Cancer Medicine, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses interim results of the phase II ZUMA-1 study in patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.

Naval Daver, MD, assistant professor, Department of Leukemia, Division of Cancer Medicine, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, discusses research evaluating different immune checkpoint pathways in patients with acute myeloid leukemia.

Results from the randomized phase II HOVON89 trial showed that nearly 40% of patients with low intermediate-1 risk myelodysplastic syndrome who were refractory to erythropoietin and granulocyte-colony stimulating factor experienced hematologic improvement with erythroid response after being treated with lenalidomide monotherapy.

Miguel-Angel Perales, MD, deputy chief, Adult Bone Marrow Transplant Service, director, Adult Bone Marrow Transplantation Fellowship Program, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, provides an overview of the PROGRESS II trial, which was conducted for patients with hematologic malignancies.

Jeffrey Jones, MD, MPH, assistant professor of Internal Medicine, Division of Hematology, The Ohio State University, discusses the results of a phase II study that evaluated the efficacy of venetoclax in the treatment of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia whose disease had progressed after treatment with either ibrutinib or idelalisib.

The BCL-2 inhibitor venetoclax (Venclexta) demonstrated activity in one-fifth of patients with heavily pretreated multiple myeloma.

Koichi Takahashi, MD, assistant professor, Department of Leukemia, Division of Cancer Medicine, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses a study exploring a potential biomarker for patients likely to develop therapy-related leukemia.

The benefits of 2 FDA-approved daratumumab–based triplet regimens were sustained in long-term data from 2 pivotal phase III studies presented at the 2016 ASH Annual Meeting.

Patients with myeloproliferative disorders have a high symptom burden that significantly affects emotional status, quality of life, and functional ability.

Patients with intermediate/high-risk myelofibrosis had improved survival when treated long term with the Janus kinase inhibitor ruxolitinib.

A third of patients with previously treated, high- and intermediate-risk myelofibrosis had objective responses to the investigational Second mitochondria-derived activator of caspases mimetic LCL161.

An analysis of c-MYC expression in relapsed myeloma identified subgroups of patients with improved response to the combination of an immunomodulator and a proteasome inhibitor.

Patients with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma had significant improvement in progression-free survival when treated with dual versus single autologous stem-cell transplant.

Worldwide clinical experience with the JAK1/2 inhibitor ruxolitinib (Jakafi) in patients with myelofibrosis has yielded safety and efficacy data similar to results of a pivotal randomized trial.

The addition of daratumumab to standard-of-care regimens tripled the increase in conversion to negative minimal residual disease status in the treatment of patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma.

The combination of elotuzumab, lenalidomide, and dexamethasone has excellent activity and is well-tolerated in the treatment of high-risk smoldering multiple myeloma (SMM), providing hope that it can delay or even halt progression to MM.

Patients with myelofibrosis and thrombocytopenia had significantly greater reductions in spleen volume and symptoms when treated with the multikinase inhibitor pacritinib, compared with the best available therapy.

The CD19-directed CAR T-cell therapy JCAR017 demonstrated a 60% complete response rate in patients with relapsed or refractory CD19-positive non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

According to the results of the phase III StaMINA trial evaluating posttransplant therapy in multiple myeloma, a second a round of chemotherapy or stem cell transplant does not improve progression-free survival or overall survival compared with the current standard course of treatment alone.

Early data from a phase I/II study suggest that the combination of brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris) and nivolumab (Opdivo) may be an active and well-tolerated outpatient regimen in patients with relapsed/refractory classical Hodgkin lymphoma after failure of standard frontline chemotherapy.

Two thirds of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) that progressed on B-cell receptor pathway inhibitors had objective responses to treatment with venetoclax, results of a small open-label trial showed.

Graham Jackson, MD, PhD, Northern Institute for Cancer Research, Newcastle University, discusses results of a study that determined lenalidomide (Revlimid) is a highly-effective maintenance therapy in myeloma patients of all ages.

Almost 80% of patients with treatment-refractory non-Hodgkin lymphoma had objective responses following treatment with KTE-C19, a chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy targeting CD19.

An FDA-approved blood cancer drug has demonstrated encouraging findings, including an overall response rate of 67%, in treatment of patients with chronic graft-versus-host-disease that was not resolved by corticosteroids.

Jennifer Woyach, MD, associate professor, Ohio State University, discusses a study examining the use of MOR208 combined with lenalidomide (Revlimid) for the treatment of chronic lymphotic leukemia (CLL) during the American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting.

Subcutaneous delivery of daratumumab was well tolerated with comparable efficacy to the FDA-approved intravenous dose in patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma.

Adding venetoclax to bortezomib and dexamethasone showed very promising efficacy and acceptable safety for patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma.