Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Cancer patients are living longer and in many cases the disease is becoming chronic rather than acute. Access to drugs that help extend life and improve quality of life, and fair prices for those drugs are therefore essential for more and more people. But patients are badly served in this respect, with delays in the availability of new treatments and incomprehensible price rises for well-established therapies, including generics, according to the data presented in the European Cancer Congress 2017. Continue reading →

London, January 18, 2017.- ADAPT SMART’s General Assembly, held at the European Medicines Agency (EMA), agrees to focus its final year on incorporating stakeholder feedback into the development of Medicines Adaptive Pathways to Patients (MAPPs) tools and methodologies. Myeloma Patients Europe (MPE) was attending this meeting.

With growing international interest and visibility in the final year of the consortium, ADAPT SMART members have agreed to redouble their efforts to collaborate with key stakeholder groups and incorporate their feedback into the deliverables during the calendar year of 2017. Continue reading →

A coalition of 60 patient advocates, healthcare professionals and scientists (including 3 Nobel Prize winners) from 20 European countries have come together to publish a blueprint for improving cancer outcomes and achieving better quality of life for cancer survivors throughout Europe.¹ They are members of the European Cancer Concord (ECC^®), an equal partnership between patients and cancer experts which launched the European Cancer Patient’s Bill of Rights on World Cancer Day 2014 in the European Parliament in Strasbourg. The publication, in the open access journal ESMO Open, has an ambitious aim – to increase the long term survival of European citizens with cancer to 70% by 2035. This 70:35 Vision emphasises the need for European countries to share best practice for the benefit of patients. Continue reading →

Myeloma Patients Europe will hold an online webinar to review the most recent myeloma findings presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) that took place in San Diego (California, United States) in December 2016.

The talk will be given by Dr Laurent Garderet, Department of Hematology, Saint Antoine Hospital, Paris, France. Continue reading →

Brussels/Salamanca, January 9, 2017. The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) has approved HARMONY, a project that aims to foster better access and care for patients with various hematologic malignancies (HM) with the use of big data. The project is made up of 51 partners from 11 European countries, including 7 pharmaceutical companies. Other organisations such as Myeloma Patients Europe (MPE), Lynphoma Coalition, MSD Alliance or CLL Advocate will be involved in this project as well in order to provide the patient perspective. Continue reading →

ESMO.- A brain-boosting protein plays an important role in how well people respond to chemotherapy. This is what reveals a study presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Asia 2016 Congress in Singapore. According to this research, cancer patients suffering depression have decreased amounts of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) in their blood. Low levels make people less responsive to cancer drugs and less tolerant of their side-effects. Continue reading →

Based on the findings of the European Atlas of Access to Myeloma Treatment, Myeloma Patients Europe’s Atlas Coaching Programme is an opportunity for MPE members to identify priorities and build successful advocacy strategies to improve access to myeloma treatments in every country in Europe. Continue reading →

At the ESMO 2016 Congress held in Copenhagen between 7th-11th October, Dr Katja Weissel, from the Haematology and Oncology Department of Medicine at University Hospital Tuebingen (Germany), presented the results of the CASTOR study, a phase III randomised controlled study of daratumumab, bortezomib and dexamethasone (DVd) compared with bortezomib and dexamethasone (Vd) in patients with relapsed or refractory myeloma. Continue reading →

MPE, in collaboration with other patient organisations, is conducting a project to analyse legal agreements of pharmaceutical companies with patient advocates. The project will make suggestions for simpler, more understandable agreements that would sufficiently reflect and protect the interests of both parties.

Ixazomib (Ninlaro®) has received a positive recommendation from the Committee for Human Medicinal Products (CHMP) within the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for its use in relapsed myeloma patients. The decision follows an initial negative CHMP recommendation that was appealed by the pharmaceutical company, Takeda. Continue reading →