The 48th annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) will take place Friday, June 1, through Tuesday, June 5, in Chicago.

More than 25,000 clinical specialists from all over the world are expected to attend the five-day meeting to discuss the current research in cancer treatment and care. The theme for this year’s meeting is “Collaborating to Conquer Cancer.”

The meeting will include many presentations and seminars focused specifically on multiple myeloma. The ASCO website currently lists nearly 50 myeloma-based presentations (included under “lymphoma and plasma cell…

Many new and promising research developments occurred in the field of multiple myeloma during 2011. Over the course of the year, The Myeloma Beacon published nearly 100 articles on important myeloma-related studies.

To identify the most important of these studies from 2011, The Myeloma Beacon surveyed leading physicians and researchers in the field.  They were asked to name the three peer-reviewed journal articles published in 2011 and the three conference presentations from 2011 that have the most important findings or implications relating to multiple myeloma.

Their selections for the most…

It has been ten days since the 2011 annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) came to a close.

Since the meeting started, The Beacon has been providing detailed coverage in the form of discussion forum postings, daily updates, and in-depth articles about key research findings.

In this and The Beacon’s next article about the meeting, however, the per­spective changes a bit.

The focus shifts to the bigger picture — to questions like: “What was the impact of the…

As the third day of the 2011 American Society of Hematology (ASH) annual meeting came to an end, attendees could look back on an agenda that featured presentations about a wide range of potential new myeloma therapies.

The afternoon myeloma sessions were focused, in fact, on potential new therapies.

The Beacon’s previous ASH 2011 update covered the afternoon presentations about carfilzomib and pomalidomide, two potential myeloma therapies that are in the late stages of development.

This update covers the afternoon’s presentations about four other potential new myeloma therapies —…

The initial results from three early-phase clinical trials suggest that the investigational drug MLN9708, either alone or in combination with Revlimid and dexamethasone, may be an effective treatment for both newly diagnosed multiple myeloma patients and patients with relapsed and/or treatment-resistant disease.

The findings from the three trials were presented earlier this week at the American Society of Hematology (ASH) annual meeting in San Diego.

MLN9708 belongs to the same class of drugs as Velcade (bortezomib), called proteasome inhibitors, and it is being developed by Millennium Pharmaceuticals, the same company that developed…