Hey, I'm Barry Paul from Living Denture and Student Charlotte, North Carolina, talking about the data that I presented here at ASH. What we did is we're trying to define functional high risk for myeloma patients in the era of novel therapies. Specifically, what we did is we looked using the ASH Research Collaboration Data Hub, we evaluated over 11,000 patients to find those patients who had had a conventional either quadriplet or triplet induction regimen and that progressed on that regimen and had had subsequent line of therapy and then progressed on that regimen. We evaluated those patients to see what predicted how long their response would last in each of those lines of therapy. What we found using recursive partitioning analysis is 30 months, if a patient had 30 months of benefit from their initial line of therapy, they typically did very well with subsequent lines of therapy. If they had less than 30 months of benefit from their initial line of therapy, there are subsequent lines of therapy were usually less effective. And really what we did to drill down and look at this in a more transparent way, we stratify these patients based on their conventional risk stratification using standard risk or high risk using the traditional myeloma prognostic markers. And what was really interesting, if you looked at the high risk patients, if they progressed under 30 months, their next line of therapy provided typically about four months of PFS, which is obviously very, very poor. If those patients progressed on their initial therapy later than 30 months, they got almost 14 months of benefit from their second line of therapy. So a very different type of outcome. But then if you look at these standard risk patients, these would not be patients who would expect to not have a nice response to either their front line or second line therapy. The patients who progressed after 30 months on their initial therapy, they got almost three years of benefit from their second line therapy. And that's what we would expect. But if you look at those standard risk patients who progressed under 30 months on their front line therapy, they only got 10 months of benefit from their second line therapy, less than the high risk patients. So that was very, very surprising. And these are the patients that we need to identify early and treat with more aggressive second line therapies, because these are the patients who we would not expect to do poorly, but they're still doing poorly. So these are the patients that we're defining as functional high risk. Terrific summary, Dr. Paul. I'm Todd Kennedy. I am a Health Tree Myeloma coach and also the chair of the patient collaboration team that's part of the ASH research collaborative, which uses the data hub that Dr. Paul described. And I think I wanted to share the relevance to the patient audience on this Health Tree University video, because as Dr. Paul described, we talk so much about the importance of understanding and there were updated risk criteria last year. So we typically define risk status based on your genetic profile. But we know, and in fact, in this research, it determined about 23% of those patients actually fall into this functional high risk category. So we tell patients, know your risk. And if you are high risk, standard risk, or functional high risk, no matter what the case is, don't lose your hope. But understanding that should drive some actions. So if you are determined that you have high risk or functional high risk, as Dr. Paul said, perhaps considering cellular therapy as a second line approach might be great. Considering a clinical trial so you might have earlier access, especially to some of the terrific innovation that was presented here at ASH. And that would really be an indicator that if you don't already have one, you really want to get an expert on your care team. So this concept of risk and functional high risk is a very essential thing for patients to really understand. And we're really proud of the data that's helping to define that. So thank you, Dr. Paul. It's a pleasure and honor to be a co-author with you on this. Same here. Really enjoyed working with you. 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 13, 2025