Assessment of response in MM: challenges and advances

Bruno Paiva, PhD, from the University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain discusses the various features of multiple myeloma (MM) that make assessing response in myeloma challenging. According to Dr Paiva, myeloma is a heterogeneous disease and the correlation between depth of response and clinical benefit, is not as evident in MM as compared to other malignancies. Further, while minimal residual disease (MRD) levels help assess the prognosis for patients with other malignancies, patients with MRD in MM generally do poorly. In recent years, however, there have been improvements in techniques such as PET-CT, which are helping to improve response assessment. Dr Paiva further discusses how the new improvements in response assessment can benefit patients and the myeloma community as a whole.
Recorded at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the European Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (EBMT) in Valencia, Spain.