Recently Diagnosed or Relapsed? Stop Looking For a Miracle Cure, and Use Evidence-Based Therapies To Enhance Your Treatment and Prolong Your Remission
Multiple Myeloma an incurable disease, but I have spent the last 25 years in remission using a blend of conventional oncology and evidence-based nutrition, supplementation, and lifestyle therapies from peer-reviewed studies that your oncologist probably hasn't told you about.
Click the orange button to the right to learn more about what you can start doing today.
- You are here:
- Home »
- Blog »
- Multiple Myeloma »
- Is Myeloma ReTreatment Possible?
Is Myeloma ReTreatment Possible?
Is myeloma retreatment possible? According to the research linked below, yes, even if you were “refractory” to the therapy you can try it again.
Retreatment or re-challenging the patient’s myeloma is not a new finding. The second link below cites research documenting the ability to retreat myeloma patients with velcade.
Retreatment of myeloma changes the concept of the average therapy plan- in my opinion anyway. If an average MM patient:
- undergoes induction therapy of revlimid, velcade and dexamethasone (RVD)- reaches remission-
- comes out of remission after an average of 2 years-
- then undergoes darzelex- reaches remission again for another year or two-
- then comes out of remission after a year or two-
- then undergoes one of the typical chemo cocktails and reaches remission-
- then retreats with velcade/bortezomib-
- then retreats with revlimid-
The basic (conservative) treatment plan above outlines about a 5-6 year therapy plan without trying newer BCMA therapies such as CAR-T cell therapy. I am holding out BCMA therapies at this point, simply because they are relatively new, carry serious side effects and can exhaust the MM patients immune system.
Once the average MM patient has undergone induction, darzelex, another novel therapy chemo cocktail or two, and retreatment, BCMA therapies will be ready for prime time and realistic therapies for the fictional MM patient to try.
I’m a myeloma survivor not any sort of oncologist. I think that MM patients should exhaust novel therapies such as revlimid, velcade and darzelex fully before undergoing relatively new therapies such as BCMA therapies if possible.
I’m simply posing possible ideas for MM patients to think about that may be less risky for the patient to consider.
man hand holding his nutritional supplemets, healthy lifestyle background.
Also consider non-toxic integrative therapies such as
- curcumin,
- resveratrol
- or omega-3 fatty acids
shown to enhance the efficacy of several MM chemo regimens
Email me at David.PeopleBeatingCancer@gmail.com with your questions about myeloma retreatment.
Thanks,
David Emerson
- MM Survivor
- MM Cancer Coach
- Director PeopleBeatingCancer
Retreatment of Multiple Myeloma with Previously Refractory Drugs
“Key Points
- Retreatment with previously refractory drugs is a viable option for late line relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma.
- Patients with a longer gap between initial line of therapy with index drug and retreatment had superior outcomes with retreatment.
As patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma (RRMM) continue to live longer, they might get exposed to most available drugs and drug classes during the disease course. For such late line RRMM or among patients without access to novel therapies, retreatment with a drug that the disease had previously been refractory to might be one option.
In this retrospective study, we describe 315 patients with RRMM at our institution that were retreated with a drug that the disease had been previously refractory to.
We found an
- overall response rate of 56.2%,
- and a median progression free survival (PFS) of 11 months with retreatment.
Patients with a longer time on initial therapy with the index drug (>28.4 months) had a superior PFS with retreatment (median PFS 16.9 months vs 8.1 months, p<0.001).
Similarly, patients with a longer time gap between the initial line of therapy with index drug and retreatment with index drug (>46.1 months) had a better PFS with retreatment (28.2 vs 8.9 months, p=0.016).
In conclusion, retreatment with a previously refractory drug is a viable therapeutic option for RRMM, with the most significant benefit derived in disease demonstrating sensitivity to initial drug exposure, and among those with a longer gap between initial drug exposure and retreatment.”
Can Velcade Bortezomib ReChallenge Myeloma?
“This real-life survey indicates that re-treatment including bortezomib as a first salvage therapy could be still considered in MM patients achieving durable response after initial exposure to bortezomib.”
Multi-drug resistance (MDR) develops in almost all multiple myeloma survivors…eventually. If a MM patient could figure out how to avoid MDR, he/she could treat MM as a chronic disease like diabetes or hypertension.
The first study linked and excerpted below documents how 71% of 134 multiple myeloma patients responded to re-treatment or a rechallenge of their multiple myeloma with Bortezomib aka Velcade at relapse. These MM survivors responded without any help from any other therapies, conventional or non-conventional…”
myeloma retreatment