Hans Lee, MD, Covers Outcomes, Treatments After Triple-Class Exposure in Myeloma

Dr. Lee is an Associate Professor and Director of Multiple Myeloma Clinical Research in the Department of Lymphoma and Myeloma at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas.

He met with Blood Cancers Today to describe findings on treatments used in real-world patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma, particularly those who were triple-class exposed. The study was presented at the 65th American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting & Exposition in San Diego, California.

“Approximately 75% of patients were triple-class refractory, and what we found was that in this particular dataset, the patients who were triple-class exposed—and again, this is largely in the pre-BCMA-targeted era—had poor outcomes, meaning that their progression-free survival was roughly five months or so; overall survival, depending on the database, was about 22 to 24 months; and the overall response to treatment was about 15%.”

Dr. Lee highlighted that patients became triple-class exposed after a median of three prior lines of therapy, even though many novel therapies are only approved after four prior lines. Furthermore, patients who were triple-class exposed often received recycled treatments from earlier lines of therapy.

“I think the take-home message is that defining the availability of drugs based on lines of therapy may not be the optimal way to do things. Drug refractoriness and drug exposure status should dictate what patients receive as their next line of therapy.”