Oral drug sets a new survival standard for bone mar...( Findings from two large internationa...),Health

Findings from two large, international clinical trials show "unprecedented" survival for patients with multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that occurs in the blood-making cells of bone marrow. The findings demonstrate that with Revlimid, an oral cancer drug, all measures of myeloma showed significant improvement in patients where previous treatments had failed. Rush University Medical Center took part in the U.S. study. Results of the study were published November 21 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

In the study, a total of 353 patients were enrolled at 44 centers. Of those patients, 177 were assigned to receive Revlimid (lenalidomide) plus dexamethasone, a steroid hormone, and 176 received a placebo plus dexamethasone. According to the study results, patients who received Revlimid had a median survival of 29.6 months, compared to 20.2 months for the placebo group. In the Revlimid group, 61 percent of patients responded to therapy as compared with 19.9 percent in the placebo group.

According to the International Myeloma Foundation, follow-up data from the U.S. study and a European study report even better results. Patients treated with Revlimid had a median survival of nearly three years (35 months), the longest median survival in this difficult to treat patient group.

"Myeloma, also called multiple myeloma, is of growing interest and concern," said Dr. Stephanie Gregory, the director of the section of Hematology at Rush University Medical Center. "Statistics show the number of diagnoses is increasing in the United States where most cancers are decreasing, and myeloma is being found in increasingly younger patients. These trends give us some urgency in having potent treatments to fight this disease."

Revlimid is an immunomodulatory agent, a drug that can modify or regulate the functioning of the immune system. It is the newest of what are called the novel therapies that have changed the outlook for myeloma patients. It i
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