I'm Hamza Hashmi. I'm a myeloma and cell therapy physician at Memorial Sloan UK Cancer Center. And I'm excited to be here meeting the DOA team and sharing some of the updates with the research studies that we have actually at this ASH 2025. And I'm Paul Gaetter. I'm a multiple myeloma patient for the last 12 years. I'm on the research patient advocate on this particular study that we're doing with the ASH RC. I'm also the leader of the San Francisco Bay Area Support Group for Myeloma. So we know that for multiple myeloma, the incidence of the disease happens to be two, three times higher in black patients compared to the white. But we really don't have a lot of good data on the differential outcomes with myeloma based on race and ethnicity. I think one of the reasons for that is some of the socioeconomic barriers as well as barriers to effective and access to effective therapies. And to answer that particular question where the impact of race, ethnicity, and social deprivation in newly diagnosed patients with myeloma, VHD tapped into the ASH Research Collaborative Data Hub, which essentially a registry comprising of about 11 centers with 10,000 patients data in there. Asking the question of what's the impact of race, ethnicity, and social deprivation in those patients. The way we looked at social deprivation was through a social deprivation index, which is actually a composite measure of the level of social deprivation from a particular community based on patients, their employment, income, transportation, their medical status, and education levels. For this particular study, we actually used the zip code to determine the social deprivation index for these patients. We've had about 2,000 patients that we looked at. 30% of them were black. Amongst those patients, we could see that the black patients were younger at the time of their diagnosis. They had a longer time from front-line therapy to transplant, had lower rates of transplant. And very importantly, they had a higher level of social deprivation in that particular study. When we looked at outcomes in patients who received the front-line therapy with triple and quadruple based therapies and transplant, we learned that response rates are very similar, progression fee survival, overall survival are very similar when we look at black and white patients. And then we did a very comprehensive multivariable analysis, adjusting and controlling for all other significant predictors of outcomes, including the patient's age, the kind of regimen they have received, the disease stage, the serogenic risk profile. And what we learned is that the single biggest predictor or significant predictor of overall survival is in fact social deprivation index. With patients who had a higher social deprivation index score, who had a higher level of social deprivation, had inferior survival outcomes. So I think the major conclusion from our study was that it's not just the race or ethnicity alone, but the level of social deprivation within a particular race that actually impacts outcomes with new diagnosed myeloma. So I do believe that any studies that are being done in future that are looking at impact of race and ethnicity on outcomes of myeloma has to take into account the social deprivation levels. And I also think that it also shows us that black and white patients biologically they're very similar. This perhaps shows the deprivation within those subgroups that determine inferior outcomes in one group versus the other. If our videos have helped you in any way and you're able to, please consider making a donation to help us continue this important work. Your gift will go three times as far when we reach $500,000 by the end of the year. Every contribution, big or small, makes a difference and we're deeply grateful for your support.
HealthTree • December 20, 2025