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

In this Spotlight series episode on Acute Myeloid Leukemia, Blood Editor, Dr. Selina Luger interviews Drs. Laura Michaelis and Alexander Perl on their paper in the series titled “The fit older adult with acute myeloid leukemia: clinical challenges to providing evidence-based frontline treatment”. The conversation explores challenges in treating AML across different patient populations. They also focus on treatment approaches for fit older adults with AML, highlighting the need for less toxic therapies and ongoing randomized trials to better understand treatment efficacy.

See the full spotlight series on Acute Myeloid Leukemia in Volume 145 Issue 24 of Blood journal.

In this week's episode we’ll learn more about a study comparing busulfan-melphalan with melphalan alone as the conditioning protocol for newly diagnosed, transplant-eligible multiple myeloma; then we will discuss data on how three-dimensional transcriptomics can reveal complex interactions between plasma cells and bone marrow microenvironments.

Featured Articles

• High-dose busulfan-melphalan vs melphalan and reinforced VRD for newly diagnosed multiple myeloma: a phase 3 GEM trial
• Profiling the spatial architecture of multiple myeloma in human bone marrow trephine biopsy specimens with spatial transcriptomics
• Preclinical advances in glofitamab combinations: a new frontier for non-Hodgkin lymphoma