More From Twin Cities Myeloma Seminar

Tuesday I wrote about Dr. Helen Healy's nutritional presentation at the Twin Cities Myeloma Foundation Seminar in Bloomington, Minnesota. Today I will conclude my report with some key points made by Dr. Morie Gertz- Chair of the Department of Internal Medicine at Mayo Clinic. Dr. Gertz presented an insightful overview of multiple myeloma using the analogy of a garden. Your bone marrow is the garden and myloma plasma cells are the weeds. There are a number of promising chemotherapy agents that are good at killing many of the weeds without doing too much harm to the garden. But none of these agents can cure the disorder. The cancer always returns. Stem cell transplants of several types destroy the garden and use stem cells that were previously harvested from the patient, or a donor, or from donated cord blood as seeds. The garden (bone marrow) begins to grow anew. But most often some weeds remain hidden in the body, or in the newly planted seeds, or begin to grow again because of a genetic flaw in the patients plasma cells. If you go to http://www.hemotology.org/ as early as next week, transcripts from last weeks 50th annual ASH (American Society of Hematology) conference in San Francisco. I tried today and info from the conference was not yet available. In a brief update about the conference at the end of his presentation, Dr Gertz noted that the most promising and popular direction for therapy targeting myeloma are all combination studies. In other words, using many of the same, newly developed drugs in different combinations and comparing the results. So far, most every combination seems to be working. The trick will be to find which combinations work best for which patient. Dr. Gertz ended his presentation with a plea for all of the myeloma patients in attendance (I estimate between 30 and 40 patients were there... Total attendance, including caregivers and guests was probably twice that number) to join clinical studies whenever possible. "There is at least one study open to every myeloma patient of one kind or another." Dr. Gertz explained. He went on to stress that you may not be eligible for a number of them. But if you check with Mayo Clinic and other myeloma research centers you will find studies that don't show up on government or organizational lists. Smaller, internal studies. Mayo Clinic has about 30 myeloma studies going on right now that aren't even officially registered on the IMF or government Websites. Why participate? Besides the fact that much, if not all of a patients care and drugs are paid for, Dr. Gertz felt that myeloma patients have an obligation to help doctors compile as much data as possible to help future patients. The only studies that really help the specialists, Dr, Gertz concluded, are studies using live patients. Studies that are performed in a setting like Mayo where there are a number of specialists studying the data and interacting with each other, collaborating regularly. It makes me proud to be a Mayo Clinic patient! And Dr. Gertz' presentation motivated me personally to search out a study, probably post transplant. He suggested several. For example, the control group, post transplant, uses no maintenance therapy. The other group would recieve regular doses of Velcade. (or Revlimid, or Thalidomide, etc) and then the researches could chart and follow the results. Differect doses and dosing frequency also need to be compared. The best news for me personally is that Revlimid continues to work and I don't need the transplant yet. The time will come soon enough. But not this today!!! I hope the same for every cancer patient and survivor that reads this post!
Feel good and keep smiling! Pat