What does the future of geriatric treatment look like for myeloma patients? I will say that this is a very exciting time for myeloma. Myeloma treatments have evolved rapidly and with it, the understanding of the role that fitness plays in making decisions about treating patients for myeloma. More and more we're seeing, especially in the transplant space where patients previously would not have been transplanted if they were over the age of 65, we're seeing that the increasing age limit for who is eligible for stem cell transplantation as a being very promising for the future as we look to additional therapies. I think overall the future is extremely bright, especially when we think about older adults and the way in which we are now incorporating additional geriatric principles such as caring for their supportive cure needs, thinking about when palliative care is appropriate, recognizing that we not only manage the myeloma but we need to think about all the other things that can influence their treatment tolerance or treatment effectiveness such as things as if they can't get to their appointments, if they're having difficulty with their memory, loss of physical function, poor nutritional status. So there's increasing recognition about all of these factors that really can influence the effectiveness of our therapies. Overall in terms of these principles when you think about fitness-based approaches to care, these are still under investigation. We have quite a lot of data coming out of single centers. Again, the fitness study is one that is highly anticipated to be read out in a few years based in the UK. And we think that more and more as we see more studies talking about the importance of fitness that this is going to be a conversation that is going to be at the forefront of caring for myeloma and really will continue to be up there when we think about precision medicine. It's the same way as we think about fitness-based strategies for patients.
HealthTree • September 13, 2021