Most myeloma patients who started treatment at the Berenson Cancer Center — a clinic in California that specializes in myeloma care — lived for more than a decade after beginning treatment, according to a new study published by scientists at the center.
Their analysis, which looked at outcomes from people newly diagnosed with myeloma who were treated at the center between 2006 and 2024, found that the median overall survival time for patients there was 152 months — more than 12.5 years. According to the researchers, this is the longest survival time ever reported in a group of unselected myeloma patients.
“The highly individualized care multiple myeloma patients receive includes more treatment options than used anywhere in the world. Patients also have 24-hour direct access to the treating physician,” James R. Berenson, MD, the center’s namesake clinician and a coauthor of the new study, said in a press release detailing the analysis findings.
“Importantly,” according to Berenson, “more frequent regular monitoring of the patient’s disease status allows for more rapid changes in treatments that are not working or causing unwanted side effects. Together, these benefits have resulted in unprecedented outcomes for myeloma patients.”
Titled “Outcomes for unselected, newly diagnosed multiple myeloma patients,” the study was published as a letter to the editor in the journal Haematologica.
Myeloma is a type of blood cancer caused by the uncontrolled growth of immune cells in the bone marrow. Because most patients have masses of cancer cells in more than one bone marrow location, the disease is often called multiple myeloma (MM).
Over the past several decades, a range of new myeloma treatments have become widely available, substantially reshaping outcomes for people with this cancer type.
However, most data on long-term outcomes in myeloma come from clinical trials, which have strict criteria for determining which patients are eligible to participate. There’s much less data from unselected patients in real-world settings.
“One of the strengths of this study is the long and accurate follow-up of a population of unselected, newly diagnosed MM patients,” the researchers wrote.
Over half of patients received at least 2 different treatments
In their study, researchers at the Berenson Cancer Center reported on outcomes from 175 patients who started treatment at their center over the last two decades. The patients’ median age was in the late 60s, and slightly more than half were men.
A variety of different treatments were used, each tailored to a patient’s individual situation. Most (73.2%) were treated with a combination of dexamethasone (a corticosteroid), bortezomib (a proteasome inhibitor), and pegylated liposomal doxorubicin (a chemotherapy). For some patients, lenalidomide, an immunomodulatory drug, was added.
After their first round of treatment, 126 individuals went on to receive at least one different treatment.
We achieved a long [overall survival] with the use of diverse classes of drugs used in a multitude of combinations.
The researchers noted that one patient received a stem cell transplant, which is a potentially curative but highly invasive therapy sometimes used to treat myeloma. None of the patients were treated with CAR T-cells or bispecific antibodies, which are new classes of myeloma treatment that aim to trigger the immune system to attack cancer cells.
“We achieved a long [overall survival] with the use of diverse classes of drugs used in a multitude of combinations,” the researchers wrote.
The scientists said they expect longer survival times for myeloma patients in the coming years as treatment options continue to improve.
“As therapies that are more efficacious at eliciting deeper responses are made more tolerable with fewer long-term and high-grade side effects, healthcare professionals will have even better treatment options available for improving survival as well as quality of life for MM patients in the future,” the researchers wrote.
In addition to a median overall survival of more than 12 years, the data showed that the median time that patients were alive without signs of disease progression was nearly two years.
The researchers noted that patients whose cancers showed high-risk genetic scores tended to have disease progression sooner, but overall survival outcomes weren’t significantly different based on cancer risk scores. In fact, the only factor found to have a significant association with overall survival rates was the age at diagnosis, with younger patients generally having a longer life expectancy.
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