A Meeting of the Myeloma Minds in Vienna

Today was the start of the European Hematological Association’s annual meeting (EHA).  EHA is Europe’s version of ASH (American Society of Hematology’s annual meeting).  This meeting will provide the attendees with the latest news in hematology and its subspecialities. According to the official website #EHA2022 knows no bounds and is intended for medical professionals, national hematology societies, patient groups, medical industry, and media worldwide. I am attending EHA as the director of HealthTree University (HTU) to gather up-to-date content to include in the HTU curriculum. 

The official start day of EHA is actually tomorrow. Today’s agenda was packed with pre-meeting satellite symposium sessions sponsored by different groups. I really enjoy attending the satellite symposium because they are more of an educational program. These sessions typically put all the pieces together that make up the myeloma puzzle. They connect the dots between all the trials that are happening in the field and provide a wonderful overview. 

The session entitled, Recent advancements in immunotherapy in myeloma,  provided an overview of the latest clinical efficacy and safety data of current and novel cellular- and immune-based therapies. Drs. San Miguel, Lonial, Munshi, Weisel updated the audience on the newer agents to treat myeloma such as CELMoDs, antibody drug conjugates, and t-cell engagers also known as bispecific antibodies or bispecific t-cell engagers. The data they presented left me feeling hopefully that these new drugs coming to our medicine cabinet will help myeloma patients who are triple class refractory ( no longer responding to IMID’s, proteasome inhibitors and CD38 monoclonal antibodies).

In the session entitled, Immunotherapies: Rising to the challenge of relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma,  Drs. Weisel, Manier and Ghobrial discussed the potential of immunotherapy in myeloma, some practicalities when using immunotherapies and how to select the optimal therapy for each patient. Patient preference, targets, cytogenetics, immune status, tumor burden and stage will all be taken into consideration when personalizing treatment.  After listening to this presentation I was thankful I have a myeloma expert on my team to help guide my treatment selections. 

Immunotherapy is going to be the star of this conference.  I am excited to gather new interviews from the global myeloma experts attending EHA and developing these interviews into new HealthTree University lessons.

In the meantime you can start learning about what the doctors at this event are discussing by watching the lessons published in our immunotherapy therapy units in HealthTree University.