Dr Hossein Kazemi Discusses De-escalating Treatment Tools for Patients With Multiple Myeloma

M. Hossein Kazemi, MD, medical oncologist and hematologist, Astera Cancer Care, speaks about some of the most used tools in patient assessment for de-escalation treatment for patients with multiple myeloma.

Transcript

What are some of the tools most frequently used to assess if a patient with multiple myeloma is eligible for de-escalation treatment?

Currently there is really no one factor yet that makes us decide if a patient is a good candidate for treatment de-escalation or not, it depends on multiple things. First of all, how long the patient has been on treatment, how the patient is doing on treatment.

Some people are on maintenance and it's not any burden to them. Some patients each clinic visit keep asking you, they cannot wait to go off treatments, basically it impacts their quality of life, etc.

And also, very importantly, how good of a response they have had, how deep the response is. And these things really assist us by MRD testing or measurable disease testing. Basically, there are different platforms, but the one that really is being used most likely in the United States is NGS testing. And we are collaborating with Adaptive, which provides us with the platform to test for us, in our patients.