MMRF Expert Offers Update on Multiple Myeloma Trials

While the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (MMRF) is solely focused on ensuring patients are equipped with precisely what they need to treat their myeloma, Chris Williams, vice president of business development at the foundation, offered even more hope with updates on the current trials the organization is working on.

TRANSCRIPTION

COMPASS is a trial that was started in 2011 and it looks at newly-diagnosed patients. When the patients are diagnosed, we take a bone marrow sample from them and we sequence that. As the patient progresses through their disease, when they go into remission, as they come out of that remission, we again contact the patient through their doctor and take another biological sequencing sample. We’ve been doing that since 2011. The trial stopped accruing in 2015 with 1,054 patients who we have that biological genomic data on each one of those patients. Today it is considered the single largest genomic data set of anyone with cancer in the world.

The (My Drug) trial is a new and innovative trial that we just launched in 2018, and it is a category of trials called platform trials where there (are multiple arms). This one happens to be a five-arm trial where we get patients as they come into the trial, we sequence them and we look at the single-gene mutations that are treated with the appropriate matching drug from pharmaceutical companies. After a few rounds of that treatment, they are then reflexed to a myeloma backbone treatment to treat their myeloma. It is an innovative trial in that it is multi-arm, and it is an evergreen trial, meaning it goes on and on, and it is also what they consider a cassette trial where you can pull these different arms in and out depending on the signal that is right. It is the first trial of its kind in the myeloma community.