CD20-positive multiple myeloma: can conventional chemotherapy still be used to achieve ideal outcome for these patients?

Abstract

In order to ascertain clinical characteristics and outcomes of CD20 + multiple myeloma (MM) patients, we retrospectively analyzed 331 newly diagnosed patients with multiple myeloma in our center. The clinical characteristics, cell morphology, immunophenotype, and cytogenetic were different between the CD20 + and CD20 − group. The median course of treatment to < nCR (near complete recovery) were 4.5 in the CD20+ group and 2 in the CD20 − group. Excluding the IgD type, overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) in the CD20 + group were higher than that in the CD20 − group. There were no statistically significant differences in PFS and OS in CD20+ patients after treatment with conventional regimens, novel drugs ± transplant, nor statistical significance between those with the response < nCR and < nCR after treatment. In conclusion, CD20-positive myeloma cells are a cluster with heterogenous clinical characteristics, cell morphology, immunophenotype and cytogenetics. For these non-IgD CD20 + MM patients, conventional therapy might be a choice to achieve an ideal outcome.

Keywords::

• CD20
• multiple myeloma
• therapy

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong, China (S2013010016838) , Science and Technology Program of Guangdong, China (2014A020212061), and National Public Health Grand Research Foundation [201202017].

Potential conflict of interest

Disclosure forms provided by the authors are available with the full text of this article at www.informahealthcare.com/lal.

This work was supported by Program of National Key Clinical Specialties and Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province, China (S2013010016838). The funding sources had no role in the study design, data collection, analysis or interpretation, or the writing of this manuscript.

Supplementary material available online

Supplementary Tables I, II and III.