Claudio Cerchione, MD, PhD, on Managing Multiple Myeloma in Special Populations of Patients

In this video, Claudio Cerchione, MD, PhD, of the Istituto Scientifico Romagnolo per lo Studio e la Cura dei Tumori ICRSS, discusses a 2023 ASCO^® Annual Meeting session titled “Management of Multiple Myeloma in Special Patient Populations: No Patient Left Behind.”

Dr. Cerchione presented a talk on treatment options for patients with myeloma and renal failure during the session. The session focused on populations of patients with multiple myeloma who may under-represented in clinical trials, he said.

“These are these subcategories [of patients that] usually have been put out from the eligibility criteria of clinical trials,” he said. “And now we don’t know which is the best management for them. But that’s why we dedicated the session to explore what is currently the state of the art in diagnostic and clinical management of these patients.”

Dr. Cerchione pointed to the recent “revolution” in immunotherapies and other novel therapies for multiple myeloma, noting that it’s critical to understand the best way use these treatments in under-represented groups to ensure there is truly “no patient left behind.”

“I think that the main important take-home message was that we have absolutely to find a way to enroll them in clinical trials to give the best opportunities,” he said.

The ASCO session kicked off with a presentation titled “Merging Molecular and Aging Assessments to Guide Therapy in Older Patients with Myeloma,” by Shakira Jeanene Grant, MBBS, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It also featured a presentation on the real-world impact of racial and ethnic disparity issues in multiple myeloma by Sikander Ailawadhi, MD, of the Mayo Clinic.