Our intentions are noble
– put high-risk multiple myeloma patients at the forefront of our investigation
to make their cure a future reality. Our process is groundbreaking – use
in-house, industry-quality platforms to ensure that our breakthrough
discoveries aren’t left sitting in research labs.
By combining Innovation, Collaboration and Scale, the High-Risk Multiple Myeloma Moon
Shot® is revolutionizing the conventional medical research
approach to rapidly adapt pre-clinical findings into treatment options for
high-risk multiple myeloma.orts
Overcoming
poor prognosis for high-risk patients
Multiple myeloma is the
second most common blood cancer and is caused by rogue plasma cells that
accumulate in the bone marrow and interfere with the normal production of other
blood cells. Patients with this disease can be sorted into risk groups, with
high-risk symptomatic disease being characterized by significantly shortened
overall survival. While treatment advances have improved clinical outcomes for
patients with standard-risk symptomatic disease, high-risk multiple myeloma
remains an urgent area with unmet therapeutic needs.
High-Risk
Multiple Myeloma Moon Shot Leaders
·
Eric Davis, M.D. Associate Professor, Lymphoma/Myeloma
·
Elisabet Manasanch, M.D. Assistant Professor, Lymphoma/Myeloma
·
Robert Orlowski, M.D., Ph.D. Professor, Lymphoma/Myeloma and Experimental
Therapeutics
Our
experts pioneered and validated a new treatment approach, which uses immune
cells, called natural killer cells, to increase the
effectiveness of stem cell transplantation for treatment of multiple myeloma.
We’re
leveraging our internal and external partnerships to ensure that our
investigations make a real impact. Our alliances with biotech giants such as
Merck, Sanofi and Celgene to ensure our clinical trials run as smoothly and
successfully as possible.
Our
cellular therapy approaches are capitalizing on volume. To ensure we’re
exploiting the maximum anti-tumor potential of natural killer cells, we’re
increasing their numbers in the lab more than 1000 fold prior to treatment.
Help
end high-risk multiple myeloma
"Even small
donations, when put together, can make a huge difference and be flipped into
much larger research efforts to make lives of myeloma patients better."
Listen as Moon Shot® co-leader
Robert Orlowski, M.D., Ph.D., explains how your generous gift can make an
impact on High-Risk Multiple Myeloma Moon Shot research projects.
Our Flagship Projects
The High-Risk Multiple
Myeloma Moon Shot is focused on preventing and eradicating this disease through
two treatment strategies:
1. Immunotherapy
2. Cellular therapy
Read more about our
projects below.
PREVENTING PROGRESSION THROUGH IMMUNOTHERAPY
For patients in pre- and
early-malignant disease stages, such as monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined
significance (MGUS) and smoldering multiple myeloma, current guidelines
recommend monitoring disease progression through watchful waiting. However, intervening
earlier in the disease process may improve treatment outcomes for patients that
eventually do progress to symptomatic high-risk multiple myeloma. Our Moon Shot
experts are focused on improving the identification of patients at high-risk
for progression and evaluating the ability for immunotherapy to delay, or
prevent, progression in these patients.
ERADICATING DISEASE THROUGH CELLULAR THERAPIES
Despite treatment
strategies such as high doses of chemotherapy and stem cell transplantation (SCT), patients
with high-risk multiple myeloma often relapse within a year. In collaboration
with the Adoptive Cell Therapy Moon Shot platform,
our experts are using immune cells with powerful anti-tumor activity, called NK
cells, to improve the effectiveness of SCT. Treatment using NK cells both
collected from umbilical cord blood and those engineered to better target
myeloma cells are being examined for their ability to improve survival outcomes
for high-risk multiple myeloma patients undergoing SCT.
STORIES OF HOPE
Grateful
patient gives back
Perry Rupp, of Roanoke,
Texas, received a successful stem cell transplant at MD Anderson after
his multiple myeloma diagnosis. He’s now giving back to the nurses who took
care of him — and doing it with an eye on innovation.
RESEARCH UPDATE
Our first-in-human Phase I
study examining the ability of natural killer cells to treat multiple myeloma
showed promising results. The findings indicated that expanded cord
blood-derived natural killer cells, combined with stem cell transplantation and
high-dose chemotherapy, had little or none of the side effects seen with
current treatments.
Learn more about the clinical study led
by Elizabeth J. Shpall, M.D., professor of Stem
Cell Transplantation and Cellular Therapy.
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