Breakthroughs in Multiple Myeloma Treatment and Von Willebrand Disease Mechanisms

In this week's episode of the Blood Podcast, Associate Editor Dr. James Griffin interviews Drs. Binod Dhakal and Ruben Bierings about their respective papers published in this week's issue of Blood. Dr. Dhakal presents his study on using talquetamab, a bispecific antibody, as a bridging therapy before BCMA-targeted CAR T-cell therapy in multiple myeloma patients, showing promising results with high response rates and manageable toxicities. Next, Dr. Bierings identified patients with genetic variants in the guanine exchange factor MAP kinase–activating death domain (MADD) that impair VWF secretion from endothelial cells and possibly cause VWD type 1. 

Featured Articles

• A novel cause of type 1 von Willebrand disease: impaired exocytosis of Weibel-Palade bodies due to biallelic MADD variants
  Sophie Hordijk, Stijn A. Groten, Petra E. Bürgisser, Sebastiaan N. J. Laan, Georg Christoph Korenke, Tomáš Honzík, Diane Beysen, Frank W. G. Leebeek, Paul A. Skehel, Maartje van den Biggelaar, Tom Carter, Ruben Bierings
• Sequential targeting in multiple myeloma: talquetamab, a GPRC5D bispecific antibody, as a bridge to BCMA CAR-T therapy
  Binod Dhakal, Othman S. Akhtar, David Fandrei, Alexandria Jensen, Rahul Banerjee, Darren Pan, Shambavi Richard, Reed Friend, Matthew Rees, Patrick Costello, Mariola Vazquez Martinez, Oren Pasvolsky, Charlotte Wagner, James A. Davis, Omar Castaneda Puglianini, Ran Reshef, Aimaz Afrough, Danai Dima, Manisha Bhutani, Omar Nadeem, Ricardo Parrondo, Ciara Freeman, Lekha Mikkilineni, Shahzad Raza, Larry D. Anderson Jr, Prashant Kapoor, Hitomi Hosoya, Saurabh Chhabra, Ariel Grajales-Cruz, Mahmoud Gaballa, Shonali Midha, Melissa Alsina, Douglas Sborov, Krina Patel, Yi Lin, Christopher Ferreri, Nico Gagelmann, Anupama Kumar, Doris Hansen, Andrew Cowan, Luciano J. Costa, Maximilian Merz, Surbhi Sidana