Penn's Abramson Cancer Center part of major phase III study f...(us tumors causing them to proliferate. ...),Health

In both the US and European studies, patients for whom all previous treatments had failed were given either lenalidomide plus dexamethasone a potent synthetic steroid or dexamethasone with placebo. These trials were designed to investigate the effectiveness and safety of cyclic dosing of REVLIMID at 25mg combined with high-does dexamethasone (HDD) compared with placebo and HDD in previously treated patients with multiple myeloma. A total of 705 patients were enrolled in 97 sites internationally. Patients in both trials had been heavily treated prior to enrollment, many having failed three or more rounds of chemo and/or radiation therapy. In addition, more than 50 percent of patients enrolled had undergone stem cell transplantation. In these new studies REVLIMID plus dexamethasone achieved superior results compared to dexamethasone alone regardless of the history of treatment, including the media survival of nearly three years. Such positive patient response suggests that treatment with REVLIMID early in the course of the disease may be beneficial. These findings have caused a change in the official physician guidelines for multiple myeloma which were recently updated to add REVLIMID as an initial treatment, instead of waiting until other treatments have failed.

In Europe and the US, REVLIMID is being used to threat myeloma. In the US it is also approved for a pre-leukemia condition called myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS). It is also being tested in other leukemias, lymphomas, and solid tumors.

The last five to ten years have been the most wonderful time to be a physician treating multiple myeloma, thanks to advances like lenalidomide, said Stadtmauer. Twenty, thirty years ago, there wasnt much we could do for these patients. We couldnt really treat the disease effectively so we tried to treat the symptoms with only two or three types of chemotherapy and radiation, which of course have their own ne
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