How We Treat Multiple Myeloma

Our Treatment Approach

The Jerome Lipper Multiple Myeloma Center is part of Dana-Farber Brigham Cancer Center's Hematologic Oncology Treatment Center, one of the world's largest and most respected treatment centers for patients with disorders of the blood or bone marrow. Hematological disorders can take many different forms, and your care team will include experts with specialized knowledge in treating various manifestations of multiple myeloma.

Because treatment for multiple myeloma is evolving quickly, it is important to be seen at — or to consult with — a treatment center like ours that has cared for many patients with this kind of cancer. Many of the most advanced multiple myeloma therapies were developed by research scientists in our own laboratories.

Multidisciplinary Team

To make your care as seamless as possible, our hematologists/oncologists, researchers, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, nurses, nutritionists, and clinical social workers work closely together to decide what kind of treatment will work best to combat your particular disease at each stage.

Experts from every specialty come together each week to evaluate each case and to verify that each patient is getting the optimal care. These specialists review your care plan to reach a consensus recommendation, which we share with you. Your team works to ensure that your care plan offers the best possible outcomes, and that all your needs are met.

Personalized Treatment

As a highly specialized Center within Dana-Farber Brigham Cancer Center's Hematologic Oncology Treatment Center, we focus on the distinct needs of people with multiple myeloma. This enables us to provide a highly personalized approach to your care. In order to create the most effective treatment plan, your care team will adjust the dosing and timing of your therapy based on how you respond to a particular treatment. This approach delivers treatments that are often very effective, and people living with multiple myeloma can have minimal disruption to their quality of life for a long period of time.

We view every patient as an individual, with unique needs and expectations. We take time to involve you and your family in each step of the treatment process. As you go through treatment, you will have access to a wide range of resources — from nutrition services to integrative therapies — that we provide to support you and your family.

Your Care

All outpatient therapy is provided at the Yawkey Center for Cancer Care at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, one of the most advanced outpatient cancer centers in the country.

If you need to be hospitalized during your care, or if you undergo stem cell transplantation, you will be admitted to Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) or the Dana-Farber Inpatient Hospital located within BWH. Your medical oncologist and nurse will closely monitor your care and will coordinate your care with additional specialists who will address any other symptoms you may be experiencing. Learn more about your stay.

If radiation therapy is part of your care plan, our Radiation Oncology department has two separate units, one at Brigham and Women's Hospital and the other at Dana-Farber.

Multiple Myeloma: Emerging Treatment Options

Kenneth C. Anderson, MD, Director of the Jerome Lipper Multiple Myeloma Cancer at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and the Kraft Family Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, explores the emerging treatment options for patients with multiple myeloma.

Treatment Options for Multiple Myeloma

Each patient's care combines the most advanced knowledge currently available with innovative new therapies based on discoveries made through research at the Jerome Lipper Multiple Myeloma Center laboratories.

Treatments can include:

Watchful Waiting

Patients who are not experiencing symptoms or who have precursor conditions — smoldering multiple myeloma (SMM) or monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS) — may not need treatment and can be monitored for disease progression. It's important to note that almost 70 percent of MGUS patients do not progress to multiple myeloma or another disorder. And while the percentage of patients with SMM who may progress to multiple myeloma is higher than with MGUS, not everyone with SMM develops multiple myeloma, either.

Induction Phase of Treatment

Most people with multiple myeloma receive a combination of three or four drugs that may include a CD38-targeted monoclonal antibody, such as daratumumab; an immunomodulatory drug (IMID), such as lenalidomide; a proteasome inhibitor such as bortezomib; and a corticosteroid such as dexamethasone. In a recent Phase II clinical trial, the combination of daratumumab, lenalidomide, bortezomib, and dexamethasone (also called Dara-RVD) was superior to a three-drug combination of lenalidomide, bortezomib, and dexamethasone (also called RVd) in terms of duration of response to treatment, as well as depth of response. These findings confirmed the effectiveness of this approach to treatment.

A three- or four-drug combination that includes an alkylating drug such as cyclophosphamide, along with a CD38-monoclonal antibody such as daratumumab, a proteasome inhibitor such as bortezomib, and corticosteroid can also be used as an induction regimen.

People who are frail due to advanced age or other medical conditions may receive only two or three drugs in order to decrease the likelihood and severity of chemotherapy-related side effects.

Induction chemotherapy is typically administered over a period of four to eight months, and is followed by either treatment intensification with high-dose chemotherapy and autologous stem cell transplantation or maintenance therapy. Many factors are considered in determining whether or not to pursue transplant, including your age, frailty, other medical conditions that may impact suitability for transplant, response to and tolerance of induction chemotherapy, and your own preferences and goals of care.

Maintenance Therapy

After the initial treatment, maintenance therapy is often used to help keep the disease in remission for a longer time.

Several clinical trials have shown a clear benefit for maintenance therapy in terms of the duration of response to treatment and long-term outcomes for patients. Most of these trials have incorporated lenalidomide as the chemotherapeutic agent of choice. On the strength of these results, the FDA approved lenalidomide for maintenance therapy following stem cell transplantation.

After a Stem Cell Transplant

  • People who undergo stem cell transplantation typically start maintenance therapy three to four months after the transplant. In our practice, lenalidomide is usually given once a day for three weeks followed by a week off, or daily continuously.
  • We continue maintenance therapy until the time the disease progresses, as long as you are tolerating it well.

Without a Stem Cell Transplant

  • For people who do not undergo stem cell transplantation immediately, maintenance therapy typically starts after the induction phase of therapy or after the stem cell collection process.
  • We most often use lenalidomide as maintenance therapy, although there are other options, including ongoing administration of a proteasome inhibitor, such as bortezomib or carfilzomib.

Supportive Therapy

Many patients with multiple myeloma experience high rates of musculoskeletal events. To help strengthen patients' bones, we often include supportive therapy as part of the treatment plan. Supportive care may include various therapies to strengthen bones, reduce bone pain, and slow bone loss. Patients with multiple myeloma are also at greater risk for infection. Your team will provide a plan to prevent, minimize, or treat infection.

Survivorship Care

We follow our patients closely between treatment plans while you are in remission. Nurses and nurse practitioners will carefully monitor the results of your lab tests and will stay in close contact with you in person and by phone, to explain options and treatments, and to help you manage side effects.

Our Adult Survivorship Program helps you find expertise, education, and support to manage issues related to surviving cancer.

Treatment Options for Relapsed Multiple Myeloma

At some point, nearly all people with multiple myeloma experience progression of their disease. When your disease relapses, your team will evaluate treatment options.

Fortunately, there is a large and expanding number of effective treatment options available. The last two decades have seen impressive advancement in the field, with 13 new drug approvals by the FDA in multiple myeloma treatment. Our Center has played a lead role in the development of many of these treatments.

  • You will have the opportunity to speak with your physician about which regimen is most appropriate for you.
  • Treatment decisions will take into account prior treatment you have received, the effectiveness of these treatments, side effects that you have experienced, and your preferences for treatment.
  • Once treatment starts for relapsed disease, you will be monitored closely to evaluate how the treatment is working. Adjustments are made to enhance its effectiveness and in relation to how well you tolerate the therapy. Treatment generally continues until your disease progresses, provided you tolerate treatment well.
  • Under certain circumstances, therapy could be stopped and you may be observed without treatment.

Treatment options may include additional chemotherapy, immune therapies such as bispecific antibodies, and CAR T-cell therapy.

CAR T-cell Therapy for Multiple Myeloma

CAR T-cell therapy is a type of cellular immunotherapy that involves genetically modifying a patient's T cells to attack their multiple myeloma using a target called B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA). CAR T-cell therapy is FDA-approved for patients with multiple myeloma that has relapsed after or is refractory to at least four prior treatments.

Learn more about CAR T-cell therapy.

Disease-Modifying Therapies for Precursor Conditions of Multiple Myeloma

Our Center for Early Detection and Interception of Blood Cancers (formerly the Center for Prevention of Progression) cares for patients diagnosed with – or at high risk for – precursor conditions of multiple myeloma such as MGUS and smoldering myeloma. The clinic works with patients to manage their risk of disease progression and offers clinical trials of early interventional therapies to prevent disease progression.

Our researchers are studying the genomic, genetic, and epigenetic factors that characterize precancerous conditions, such as smoldering multiple myeloma and monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance, at our Center for Early Detection and Interception of Blood Cancers.

We created the center to understand, at the molecular level, why some patients go on to develop disease, while others do not – and to develop non-toxic targeted therapies to prevent progression, or even eliminate the disease before it leads to symptoms.

Centers for Early Detection and Interception

617-762-2334

The Center for Early Detection and Interception of Blood Cancers is part of Dana-Farber’s Centers for Early Detection and Interception, a new multidisciplinary clinical and research program for individuals who are at increased risk of developing cancer.

Talk with one of our experts to evaluate if the Centers for Early Detection and Interception is the right next step for you or your patient's care.

Clinical Trials Questions?

877-338-7425

Multiple Myeloma Research and Clinical Trials

Our Center offers access to a wide range of clinical research trials that aim to extend the duration of patients' responses to treatment, and to improve patient outcomes.

  • Trials include the spectrum of the disease, from precursor conditions to newly diagnosed to relapsed myeloma.
  • We offer a number of trials evaluating novel drug combinations for newly diagnosed diseases. It will be important that you discuss these with your care team.

Our research in the laboratory and in clinical trials is focused on several important areas. These include investigations of the genetic abnormalities of myeloma cells; studies of the complex signaling that enables myeloma cells to grow and resist both conventional chemotherapy and novel therapy; efforts to unleash the power of the body's immune system and use it against myeloma; and explorations of the way in which myeloma cells interact with their environment in the bone marrow and outside the marrow compartment.

Breakthrough Research Informs Breakthrough Treatments

The last few years have been very encouraging for blood cancer research. Many new targeted therapies and immunotherapies are improving treatment outcomes for patients with multiple myeloma. Researchers at the Jerome Lipper Multiple Myeloma Center at Dana-Farber Brigham Cancer Center are driving much of the progress being made.

These breakthrough findings show how whole genome sequencing can lead to the discovery of cancer mutations that can be specifically targeted by new therapies.

Second Opinions

Get Started

Consultations and Second Opinions

  • We believe there is value in patients with suspected or diagnosed multiple myeloma receiving a second opinion.
  • We routinely evaluate specimens sent to us from outside centers. These specimens are examined by our entire multiple myeloma team, including our expert hematopathologists. Multiple myeloma can be difficult to evaluate and properly treat. Reasons to consider a second opinion include:
    • To confirm your diagnosis.
    • To be treated at Dana-Farber Brigham Cancer Center (if you have already received a diagnosis).
    • To determine the optimal therapy — and whether any is needed at this time.
    • To learn more about your cancer from specialists who are world leaders in studying this disease, and who have treated hundreds of other patients like you.
    • To learn if you're eligible for a clinical trial.

Phone: 877-442-3324
Online: Complete the Appointment Request Form

Can't travel to Boston? Our Online Second Opinion service lets patients from all over the world receive expert second opinions from Dana-Farber oncologists.

For Referring Physicians

Because you, the referring physician, are an integral part of your patient's care team, we are committed to collaborating with you to provide the best care for your patient.

If you are a physician and have a patient with diagnosed or suspected multiple myeloma or plasma cell disorder, we look forward to working with you. Learn how to refer a patient.