Abdulraheem Yacoub, MD, on Advancing Outcomes for Patients With Myelofibrosis and Myeloproliferative Neoplasms

CancerNetwork® sat down with Abdulraheem Yacoub, MD, to discuss some of the data to come out of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2021. He explained that predictors of response to therapy and the incorporation of early transplantation in these patients had the potential to significantly influence the field.

Transcript:

The next step in the advancements of myelofibrosis and myeloproliferative neoplasms is to be able to predict responses in patients. There are many agents in development. There are many novel drugs with very unique and different mechanisms of actions. Although completing all these clinical trials is necessary to try to define the data and find if this drug will help patients, it’s very challenging to complete all those trials simultaneously. The next wave of improvement in patient outcomes is to try to be able to identify early predictors of response. And in this way, hopefully, the treatment for myelofibrosis will be more individualized and will be more personalized. [Clinicians] will be, based on the baseline biomarkers, more likely to predict [response to] different therapies and hopefully, that will improve outcomes substantially.

Also, trying to incorporate more transplantation early on in myelofibrosis, we try also to identify which therapies can improve patient outcomes through the transplant or against transplant or maybe make patients more likely to have a successful transplant. So that’s also an area for improvement that we’re hopefully going to hear more about in the future.