Beth Faiman talks about the excitement of new medications but the challenge of getting to a standard of care that includes these new drugs.
The question is what are the top three challenges. I would like to say there are only three. If I had to narrow it down, and I know this is a recurring theme, but identifying with all the available drugs. What's the best drug for the patient, because there are so many different options currently available to treat multiple myeloma that diagnosis and relapse. Especially the early relapse.
Two of the drugs that were approved are with only one prior line of therapy, and that's ixazomib and elotuzumab. Bringing these drugs to the patient earlier is important. In addition to knowing what drug to use when, it's the side‑effect management.
These are new drugs. Understanding how to give the drug and what the side effects are is going to be a big challenge. It's going to have a little bit of time for the nurses and the physicians to feel comfortable to use these drugs.
The third challenge is getting the drug to the patient that is best needed. We've talked a lot about the importance of side‑effect management from nurses and to help adherence, but really getting the individuals to understand what the drugs are for, and how to take them, and the refills.
Thinking about one of the drugs, ixazomib, was FDA‑approved. It's an oral regimen, FDA‑approved for relapse myeloma. It's in combination with lenalidomide and dexamethasone. They only take the drug weekly, and the lenalidomide’s daily, and the dexamethasone’s weekly.
You can see that this poses a challenge for the patients. It's not just giving that one drug. I'm not picking on ixazomib. I think that all of these drugs are great, but then there's supportive care therapies, bone strengtheners, anti‑virals and antibiotics. There are many challenges that nurses and clinicians face, and then patients and caregivers as well.