Moving Toward a Cure for Myeloma

Abstract

Historically, multiple myeloma has been considered an incurable disease, mainly because of its recurrence after transient control. However, the landscape of multiple myeloma therapeutics has significantly changed over the last 2 decades, with disease remissions lasting much longer. The advent of modern-day induction regimens, usage of high-dose melphalan followed by autologous stem cell transplantation, and well-tolerated maintenance regimens has resulted in deeper and durable responses, with less frequent disease recurrences, and patients are living much longer. Moreover, the conventional testing for response assessments in multiple myeloma was developed at least 60 years earlier, and there was a clear need for more sensitive diagnostics to test measurable residual disease at deeper levels. Next-generation sequencing and next-generation flow cytometry are highly sensitive techniques that were refined over the last decade and have a sensitivity of 10−5 to 10−6 (1 cell per 100,000/1 million). More recently, immunotherapy strategies—including the cellular therapies—have allowed us to expand our ability to achieve and maintain measurable residual disease negativity even in the refractory setting. These advances have brought us much closer to a cure for multiple myeloma; clearly, it has become more realistically achievable, challenging the dogma of multiple myeloma as an incurable disease.