Dr Nina Shah on the Impact of New Treatments for Multiple Myeloma

The last 5 years have seen a host of new drugs approved for multiple myeloma, improving survival times for patients, explained Nina Shah, MD, associate professor, University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine.

Transcript

What has been the biggest change in the last 5 years in multiple myeloma treatment?

There have been so many changes in multiple myeloma. Number one, we’ve had a host of new drugs approved. Some of them are better drugs for the same mechanism of action. And some of them are new types of drugs and I’d say the new types of drugs have really been focused on immunotherapies, that being antibodies against specific proteins on the myeloma cells and that’s really changed the way we treat relapsed myeloma.

How have new multiple myeloma treatments impacted survival and other outcomes?

Well, we know that we’re doing a better job. We know that patients that are treated over the past 5 to 10 years are doing better than those treated before, and that’s really encouraging to us and part of that, most of that reason, is because of all these new drugs. We’re really thankful to all the patients for participating in clinical trials to help this along. I think that people who are diagnosed with myeloma now really can say that they’ll survive longer than those who had been diagnosed before. And that’s because of these new drugs.