Hello, I am Arvind Suresh. I'm currently at UCSF in San Francisco. And so this year's ASH, I had a poster abstract where we were talking about different options for maintenance therapy for individuals who had high risk new diagnosis of multiple myeloma and ended up getting an upfront autologous stem cell transplant. And so in this population, we still don't know what the best strategy for maintenance therapy actually is, especially because now with the use of upfront anti-CE38 antibodies, I think we are now seeing those also being used after transplant in the maintenance setting as well. And so we ended up doing a study where over the last 10 years at our center, we saw what the outcomes of patients who underwent an autologous stem cell transplant upfront for a new diagnosis of multiple myeloma and were high risk, and also what their outcomes were with respect to PFS and OS, with respect to the different strategies for maintenance therapy. And so overall in our cohort, we had a median duration of follow up of 37 months. And the three-year PFS was actually 78%, which is actually comparable to other studies that have already been done as well. I think in addition to that, however, we compared outcomes with different strategies that doctors at our center actually chose. And we were looking at what were the predictors of their improvements in survival. And so the two main things that we found was one, that if you're able to actually deepen the response prior to transplant. So if you were able to get VGPR or better, that actually has benefit in terms of the PFS. And then we also found that the use of upfront anti-CD38 antibodies, for instance, with quadruplet induction regimen also has an improvement as well. However, when looking at the maintenance strategies, we actually found that it didn't really matter what patients got for their strategy for maintenance therapy. And then in this high risk population, they all had similar outcomes. And so I think this is important because I think this means that there is an importance and an opportunity really for shared decision making for patients with their physicians as to what is the best option. Because often with these different strategies for maintenance therapy, because they're continued for a long time, often they have a lot of side effects and things that can impact if the patients are able to actually tolerate the treatment as well. And so this is an opportunity for patients to actually think about that with their doctors. And I think in addition to that, it also indicates a need really for more prospective studies to actually see if there are better options really for maintenance therapy in this cohort, especially because even doing doublets and triplets in the maintenance setting had really a small impact on the PFS outside of getting the anti-CD30 antibodies during the start of therapy with induction. 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. Thank you.
HealthTree • January 2, 2026