For a heavily pretreated multiple myeloma population, daratumumab as a monotherapy showed meaningful, durable activity with deep responses and a favorable safety profile. Saad Usmani, MD, of the Levine Cancer Institute, provides the highlights of this study on the first monoclonal antibody to show promise in multiple myeloma (Abstract LBA8512).
Lawrence N. Shulman, MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Clifford A. Hudis, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discuss the delivery of cancer care in resource-constrained settings such as Rwanda and Haiti, and plans to conduct research in basic tumor biology of patients in these areas.
Dung T. Le, MD, of Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University, and Axel Grothey, MD, of the Mayo Clinic, discuss how mismatch repair status predicts clinical benefit of immune checkpoint blockade with pembrolizumab (Abstract LBA100).
James H. Doroshow, MD, of the National Cancer Institute, describes a new precision medicine initiative called the MATCH trial: Molecular Analysis for Therapy Choice. In 2,400 NCI clinical trial sites, 3,000 patients will be screened and their tumors analyzed to determine whether they contain genetic abnormalities for which a targeted drug exists.
Ruben A. Mesa, MD, of the Mayo Clinic, discusses pacritinib and its significant efficacy in myelofibrosis (Abstract LBA7006).
Jan C. Buckner, MD, of the Mayo Clinic discusses adjuvant whole-brain radiotherapy and the need for initial treatment with radiosurgery and close monitoring to preserve cognitive function in patients with brain metastases (Abstract LBA4).
