High-Dose Sequential Therapy and Single Autologous Transplantation for Multiple Myeloma

Analysis of 196 previously treated patients demonstrated a median event-free survival (EFS) of 36 months with a median overall survival of more than 6 years. The main toxicity of this therapy is related to carmustine-induced pneumonitis or interstitial pneumonitis (IP). This complication is related to the dose of carmustine. Institutional experience in myeloma patients using this dose of carmustine indicates an incidence of IP of34%. There have been recent studies evaluating the role of tandem autologous transplants for patients with multiple myeloma. These trials were based upon the hypothesis that performing tandem high-dose therapy regimens would lead to increased tumor cell kill, decreased tumor burden and an improvement in overall survival. Our results with high-dose sequential therapy including the dose-intense carmustine/melphalan transplant demonstrates similar median EFS and overall survival (OS) when compared with the results of tandem transplant approaches.The proposed trial will continue to use a high-dose sequential transplant approach, however, we will use a reduced dose of carmustine which we expect to be associated with a lower incidence of IP.