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A serious disease, multiple myeloma is a cancer that affects the bone marrow. Also called Kahler’s disease, multiple myeloma affects plasma cells, which will proliferate, invade the bone marrow and eventually destroy the bone. Fortunately, treatments have made progress and the Academy of Medicine speaks today of “serious hopes of cure” for this disease.
Multiple myeloma is a cancer affecting the bone marrow. It leads to the proliferation of plasma cells and ultimately to the destruction of the bone structure.
More than 5,000 cases per year
This pathologyrepresents 1 to 2% of cancers and 10 to 12% of hematological malignancies, with approximately 5,400 new cases per year in France” recalls the Academy of Medicine. Multiple myeloma is also a disease of the elderly. In effect, “the median age at diagnosis is close to 70, with a third of patients over 75 and a fifth over 80.
A more detailed diagnosis
A serious disease, multiple myeloma is nevertheless increasingly better diagnosed and treated. And this is what the Academy of Medicine wishes to underline, as Professor François Bricaire, who is a member, points out: “By evoking multiple myeloma, the Academy of Medicine wishes to raise the important points relating to this pathology and wants to recall the progress made, because it remains a serious disease”.
Indeed, according to the Academy of Medicine, the “recent years have seen a refinement of diagnostic and prognostic criteria” and “the treatment has been progressing for about 20 years in a continuous and sustained way”.
Healing, now possible…
Progress is such that the Academy of Medicine does not hesitate to speak of healing. “The word healing is no longer taboo“ write the Sages in their press release.
If it is not a cure in the strict sense, it is a question for certain patients of advanced age of “benefit, even without definitive eradication of their disease, from its prolonged control while maintaining a decent quality of life, thanks to drugs with an improved tolerance profile“with an “identical” life expectancy to patients without myeloma.
…thanks to increasingly effective treatments
In twenty years, this disease has seen significant therapeutic progress. Historical drugs (alkylating agents) were succeeded by immunomodulators and proteasome inhibitors, then by anti-CD38 monoclonal antibodies. Even more recently, innovative immunotherapies using so-called bispecific or toxin-coupled antibodies, and cell therapies of the chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy (CAR-T) type constitute new weapons.
With such an arsenal, treatments make it possible to target tumor cells differently and to consider numerous therapeutic combinations or sequencing. These possibilities also continue to grow with several drugs approved each year at European level.
The Academy remains vigilant
If it welcomes all the progress made, the National Academy of Medicine remains vigilant, on two points in particular:
- “Future developments in immunotherapy, and the need to support quality academic research in this field (particularly with regard to CAR-T strategies)”;
- “Vigilance, which must be maintained on access to these new treatments, all of which are expensive – access to date generally good in our country, but with persistent questions about the speed of access and the setting of a fair price, issues on the agenda of the Academy’s Task Force on Expensive Cancer Drugs”.