New Treatment for Myeloma
A program at Huntsman Cancer Institute (Utah) is offering a treatment option
it hopes will let patients diagnosed with multiple myeloma live longer.
The new Utah Blood and Marrow Transplant and Myeloma Program is headed
by Dr. Guido Tricot, who came to the U. from the Myeloma Institute for
Research and Therapy at the University of Arkansas for Medical
Sciences. While there, he pioneered use of a treatment that has
increased the median survival for newly diagnosed myeloma patients from
2.5 to 10 or more years.
Most myeloma transplant protocols call for a single round of high-dose
chemotherapy, which kills both cancerous and healthy bone marrow cells.
Then patients are rescued by their own healthy stem cells, collected
prior to chemotherapy — an autologous stem-cell transplant.
Tricot's strategy prescribes four rounds of chemotherapy, two of which
are high dose and coupled with autologous stem-cell transplant
immediately after the chemo drugs leave the body.
Even so, some myeloma cells linger. To delay relapse, Tricot prescribes
two years of maintenance therapy to fight any latent myeloma cells.
Regards,
Craig Persel