Recent advances in myeloma treatment

Therapeutic experience of vincristine/cyclophosphamide/melphalan or mitoxantrone/prednisone combination therapy plus thalidomide as first-line induction therapy for newly diagnosed multiple myeloma in a single institution of China

INTRODUCTION

To investigate the safety and efficacy of the combination regimen vincristine, cyclophosphamide, melphalan or mitoxantrone and prednisone (VCMP) plus thalidomide as first-line induction therapy for newly diagnosed multiple myeloma (MM).

METHODS

Three hundred and ninety-six symptomatic, newly diagnosed MM patients were treated with VCMP plus thalidomide in our hospital for the past 11 years, and clinical data of these patients were retrospectively analyzed.

RESULTS

Of the 396 patients enrolled, the total response rate was 77.3%. Forty-three patients relapsed after sCR and CR. Mean cycles to first response were six cycles (range 1-16 cycles). A total of 53% of patients achieved at least a PR within the first cycle of therapy. The actuarial 1-year, 3-year and 5-year overall survival of all patients were 89.4%, 29.5% and 10.6%, respectively. The probabilities of 1-year, 3-year and 5-year progression-free survival of all patients were 84.0%, 23.1% and 8.4%, respectively. The major adverse events were gastrointestinal symptoms, electrolytes and glucose metabolism disorders, hypertension, infection, peripheral nerve disease and hematological adverse events, which were mostly below grade 3 and could be alleviated by symptomatic treatment.

CONCLUSION

We concluded that VCMP plus thalidomide is an effective regimen with manageable side effects in the treatment of symptomatic, newly diagnosed MM including elderly patients and patients with renal failure.

Immunomodulatory drugs improve the immune environment for dendritic cell-based immunotherapy in multiple myeloma patients after autologous stem cell transplantation

Multiple myeloma (MM) is characterized by a malignant proliferation of plasma cells in the bone marrow with associated organ damage. Although the prognosis of MM has improved recently, the disease remains incurable for the large majority of patients. The eradication of residual disease in the bone marrow is a main target on the road toward cure. Immune cells play a role in the control of cancer and can be tools to attack residual MM cells. However, the myeloma-associated immune deficiency is a major hurdle to immunotherapy. We evaluated ex vivo the effects of low doses of the immunomodulatory drugs (IMiDs) lenalidomide and pomalidomide on several immune cell types from MM patients after autologous stem cell transplantation and with low tumor burden. We observed that these drugs increased CD4(+) and CD8(+) T-cell proliferation and cytokine production, enhanced the lytic capacity of cytotoxic T lymphocytes and reduced the suppressive effects of regulatory T cells on CD8(+) T-cell responses. In addition, we found that functional dendritic cells (DCs) can be generated from mononuclear cells from MM patients. The presence of IMiDs improved the quality of antigen-specific T cells induced or expanded by these DCs as evidenced by a higher degree of T-cell polyfunctionality. Our results provide a rationale for the design of early phase clinical studies to assess the efficacy of DC-based immunotherapy in combination with posttransplant maintenance treatment with IMiDs in MM.