New Phase 3 ENDURANCE trial findings inform maintenance therapy decisions for newly diagnosed multiple myeloma patients not undergoing stem cell transplant.
Sagar Lonial, MD, FACP, FASCO
Results of the randomized Phase 3 ENDURANCE clinical trial by the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group (ECOG-ACRIN), published in the New England Journal of Medicine, offer new insights into the optimal maintenance therapy strategy for patients with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma who are not undergoing an autologous stem cell transplant.
With a median follow-up of seven years, overall survival rates in the ENDURANCE trial were almost identical between patients who continued lenalidomide (an oral immunomodulatory drug) until their disease progressed and those who stopped after two years.
The publication was co-authored by Sagar Lonial, MD, FACP, FASCO, chief medical officer of Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University, with colleagues from the ECOG-ACRIN Myeloma Committee, the International Myeloma Foundation (IMF) and cancer centers across the country. S. Vincent Rajkumar, MD, and Shaji Kumar, MD, both hematologists from Mayo Clinic, were senior and first authors, respectively.
According to Lonial, “This is the first randomized trial to show that limited duration lenalidomide maintenance does not sacrifice overall survival in the context of no transplant and triplet induction.” Lonial is professor and chair of the Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology at Emory University School of Medicine, where he holds the Anne and Bernard Gray Family Chair in Cancer. He also serves as vice chair of the IMF Board of Directors.
The study was funded by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health and conducted through the NCI’s National Clinical Trials Network (NCT01863550). Additional support was provided by Amgen.