MPN Hub

During the 63rd ASH Annual Meeting and Exposition, the MPN Hub was pleased to speak to Laura Michaelis (Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, US) and Claire Harrison (Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK). We asked, Patient follow-up in myeloproliferative neoplasms: Best practices and myths. In this podcast, Michaelis and Harrison discuss the best practices in MPN, in particular in regards to diagnosis. They also discuss the new data that was presented at ASH 2021, such as the MOMENTUM (NCT04173494) study and momelotinib. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

During the 62nd American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition, the MPN Hub spoke to Marina Kremyanskaya, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, US. We asked, Is the hepcidin-mimetic PTG‑300 a promising treatment for therapeutic phlebotomy-dependent polycythemia vera (PV)?Currently, patients with PV require frequent phlebotomy. Kremyanskaya discusses promising results from a phase II clinical trial evaluating the safety and efficacy of PTG-300, a novel hepcidin-mimetic, in patients with PV who received three or more phlebotomies up to 6 months before treatment. Kremyanskaya highlights that the need for phlebotomy was eliminated in patients treated with PTG-300. In addition, PTG-300 was well tolerated. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

During the 62nd American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition, the MPN Hub spoke to Jyoti Nangalia, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. We asked, Should we consider early testing and treatment for driver mutations acquired in childhood? In this podcast, Jyoti Nangalia reports results from a study using next-generation sequencing to trace acquired MPN mutations in hematopoietic stem cells taken from patients with varying stages of disease presentation. Nangalia discusses unexpected results, such as the acquisition of key driver mutations (JAK2 and DNMT3A) very early in life. She also discusses results observing a variation in the growth rate of cancer cell clones between patients, as well as the correlation of growth rate with disease presentation. Nangalia concludes with possible future applications of these methods in the early detection and prevention of MPN. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

During the 62nd American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition, the MPN Hub spoke to the Steering Committee Chair, Jean-Jacques Kiladjian, Université de Paris, Paris, FR. We asked, When can we safely discontinue interferon alpha therapy in patients with myeloproliferative neoplasms?Results from several studies have shown that interferon alpha is able to induce high rates of complete hematological remission in patients with polycythemia vera, but what are the outcomes in patients who had received interferon alpha and then discontinued treatment?Kiladjian reports the results of a study comparing the clinical outcome of patients with myeloproliferative neoplasms who discontinued therapy after at least three months of interferon alpha treatment to patients who continued interferon alpha treatment despite achieving a complete hematological remission. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

During the 62nd American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition, the MPN Hub spoke to Ghaith Abu-Zeinah, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, US. We asked, Does interferon alpha prolong survival and prevent progression in patients with polycythemia vera (PV)?PV is a disease associated with shorter survival due to short-term complications, such as thrombosis, and long-term complications of progression to myelofibrosis and transformation to acute leukemia, which are associated with poor prognosis. The current treatment guidelines for PV recommend phlebotomy only for low-risk patients and, for a long time, these guidelines favored hydroxyurea over interferon alfa for the initial treatment of high-risk patients.In this podcast, Abu-Zeinah shares the key findings of a retrospective study comparing myelofibrosis-free survival and overall survival of 470 patients with PV treated with recombinant interferon alfa, hydroxyurea, or phlebotomy only. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

During the First Annual Texas Virtual MPN Workshop, the MPN Hub spoke to our Steering Committee members Laura Michaelis, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, US, and Tiziano Barbui, Papa Giovanni XXIII Hospital, Bergamo, IT. We asked, What do we know about the outcome of concomitant MPN and COVID-19?In this podcast, Tiziano Barbui starts by giving some background to the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe. Prof. Barbui has focused on how to help his patients with myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPN) during the outbreak. As a member of the European LeukemiaNet Working party on MPN, Prof. Barbui launched a study in 38 European centers, collecting 180 patients with both MPN and COVID-19. Laura Michaelis asks, are patients with MPN more susceptible to COVID-19 infection? Prof. Barbui discusses this question with reference the prevalence of people infected with COVID-19, who are asymptomatic but show serum-positivity.Then, Prof. Michaelis asks what the fatality rate was in patients with MPN who also contracted COVID-19. Tiziano Barbui speaks about the results that he found in his hospital and in the study he commissioned. Laura Michaelis highlights that the stage of the epidemic also impacts on case fatality. They go on to comment on the type of comorbidities present in patients with MPN and how this effects their risk of severe disease with COVID-19. This leads to a discussion of the important variables identified during analysis of the data from Prof. Barbui's study. Prof. Michaelis in particular asks about how ruxolitinib modifies the risk for patients with MPN. Tiziano Barbui answers this, paying particular attention to the inflammatory environment in patients with COVID-19. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

During the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) Virtual Annual Meeting I, the MPN Hub was pleased to speak to Christine Spencer, Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, San-Francisco, US and Diwakar Davar, University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, Pittsburgh, US. We asked: how can we use the microbiome to improve cancer immunotherapy and alleviate side effects such as graft-versus-host-disease?In this podcast, Dr Davar starts by providing a background on the importance of the microbiome in adaptive and innate immunity, while Dr Spencer states the importance of the cross-talk between the microbiome and immune system through microbial products, peptides, and metabolites. Dr Davar then explains the concept of immunosurveillance, immunoediting, and checkpoint inhibitors. Dr Spencer describes fecal microbiome transplant studies that showed features of the microbiome can predict response to immunotherapy and effect T-cell expression. Dr Davar then describes some of the studies that are looking at fecal microbiome transplant in combination with checkpoint inhibitors. He goes on to discuss studies investigating the use of live bacterial products to elicit the same effects as fecal microbiome transplant, particularly the mediation of CD8 T cells. Dr Spencer also talks about probiotics, antibiotics, and diet and explains how this can affect the gut microbiome and describes studies looking at these features in terms of response to immunotherapies. She also describes the microbiome research related to graft-versus-host-disease and the impact of higher alpha diversity on post-transplant survival, while Dr Davar explains how the microbiome may also affect toxicity and side-effects of cancer immunotherapies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.