The roundtable panelists discuss the mechanism of action of CELMoDs, their potential to overcome drug resistance and the features that distinguish them from earlier therapies, including immunomodulatory drugs.
The panel was moderated by Dr. Paul G. Richardson, MD, clinical director of the Jerome Lipper Multiple Myeloma Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, who speaks with Meletios A. Dimopoulos, MD, professor and chairman of the department of clinical therapeutics at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens School of Medicine, Rahul Banerjee, MD, FACP, assistant professor in the clinical research division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, and Prof. Katja Weisel, deputy head of oncology, hematology and bone marrow transplantation at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf.
“I think it’s a real innovation we see now,” Dr. Weisel said. “We are coming now from two decades of treating with immune modulating agents, starting with thalidomide and then … lenalidomide, and I think that truly changed the lives of many myeloma patients.
“But it was also time to move to the next generation of those agents, with more precise targeting. That allows us to achieve better efficacy with much lower off-target toxicity. I think that is the major feature of the CELMoDs.”
CELMoDs represent a distinct drug class rather than simply an extension of earlier IMiDs, Dr. Richardson stressed.
“I think it’s important for our audience to understand that they are quite distinct as a class from the original IMiDs, which have transformed myeloma management over the last three decades.”
This video is being brought to you by an education grant by Bristol Myers Squibb.
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