Multiple Myeloma Treatment Advances
- Matt Damon lost his father, Kent Damon, to multiple myeloma in 2017. He recently got a tattoo to honor him that says “Nomad” the name of Kent’s boat and Damon spelt backwards.
- Multiple myeloma is considered incurable but treatment advances are being made. CAR T-cell therapy or chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy for example, is making a splash. It is currently being incorporated sooner in the treatment protocol, according to one of our experts.
- Matt has previously said "for the first seven years, there were things that worked really well for him” when talking about his dad’s myeloma treatment. It’s likely that he was referring to Kent’s maintenance therapy.
- Improvements in maintenance therapy the last stage of multiple myeloma treatment include Revlimid, "considered standard of care at this time," according to one of our experts.
- In addition, the bispecific monoclonal antibody drug Tecvayli was recently FDA approved to treat adults with multiple myeloma that came back or did not get better after treatment with at least four other anticancer therapies.
Matt’s father, Kent Damon, died of multiple myeloma in over five years ago. But honoring the ones we’ve lost doesn’t have to be on any sort of timeline. And just the other day, Daniel Winter a celebrity tattoo based in Los Angeles, California posted that the Good Will Hunting actor paid him a visit for some very special ink. And Matt even returned the favor!
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“The tattoo has great meaning!” Winter explained. “For his late father We tattooed NOMAD which was his fathers boat and also Says DAMON backwards! Pretty rad tattoo with so much Meaning!”
Matt Damon on Losing His Father to Cancer
Kent Damon was first diagnosed with multiple myeloma back in 2010. Multiple myeloma is a type of blood cancer that involves plasma cells a certain kind of mature white blood cell in the bone marrow that helps fight infection by making proteins that supports your immune systems fight against germs.
In a conversation with Extra shortly before Kent’s passing, Matt Damon said his father’s prognosis was not very good.
"It's been a slow unfolding. My dad's sick, so that's a process we're going through," he explained. "We'll take any prayers you got, so throw 'em up there."
Sadness Is Not Always A Bad Thing Coping After Losing A Parent To Cancer
Matt lost his father at 74 on Dec. 14, 2017. Almost exactly a year later, Matt hosted “Saturday Night Live” and paid tribute to him during his opening monologue by reminiscing about watching the show with his father as a kid.
"Week after week, I tried to stay up, and it wasn't until I was eight years old that I made it all the way to the end," Damon said. “I probably didn't get all the jokes, but I laughed at everything that my dad laughed at.
“And although it was way past our bedtime, my dad knew there was nothing more important in the world than to laugh with the people that you love."
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In a full circle moment, he took the time to acknowledge how his family was honoring his father’s lessons and legacy that night.
“My father passed away a year ago yesterday, and tonight my big brother is in Boston right now watching with his two boys, and all my kids are here, including my youngest, who happens to be eight years old,” he said. “Here's to all the moms and dads who let their kids stay up too late for all the right reasons.”
More recently, Matt shared details about his father’s cancer journey in a 2021 episode of Dax Shepard’s hit podcast “Armchair Expert.” He was there for a lot during Kent’s final year because Matt actually moved to Boston to be with him during that time.
"For the first seven years, there were things that worked really well for him,” Matt said of Kent’s treatment. “So he'd get like an infusion every two weeks. And he'd have one sleepless night then he was great. He had wonderful care at Mass General in Boston."
Advances in Maintenance Therapy for Myeloma
Multiple myeloma is technically considered an incurable disease, but that absolutely doesn’t mean a diagnosis is a death sentence. CAR T-cell therapy, for instance, has also been making a splash in the world of multiple myeloma treatment. CAR T-cell therapy or chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy is a treatment that genetically engineers a patient's own immune cells to attack cancer cells.
"We're trying to incorporate CAR T-cell therapy sooner in the treatment protocol rather than wait until the patients has had multiple treatment for relapsed and refractory multiple myeloma," Dr. Tareq Al Baghdadi, a medical oncologist and hematologist at St. Joe's Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan, told SurvivorNet.
And when Matt Damon talked about his father’s treatment working well for quite some time until it didn’t, he’s likely referring to Kent Damon’s maintenance therapy. Thankfully, improvements in maintenance therapy are being made as well. Maintenance therapy is the last stage of multiple myeloma treatment meant to keep the cancer under control after you've had other forms of treatment.
"With regards to maintenance therapy in multiple myeloma patients, this is mainly studied in patients who have had autologous stem cell transplantation, and there's been multiple clinical trials looking at different medications over the years," Dr. Al Baghdadi said. "And the one that showed the most benefit and considered standard of care at this time is [the immunomodulatory drug] Revlimid.
"This is especially the case in standard-risk patients who can go on two years of Revlimid, and, with that, achieve an improvement in disease control and survival."
The Future of Multiple Myeloma Treatment
Revlimid is the brand name for the drug lenalidomide. Being an immunomodulatory drug, it modifies a person's immune system response. Revlimid is also commonly seen as part of induction therapy the first phase of treatment, with the goal of reducing the number of myeloma cells within your bone marrow to prepare for a stem cell transplant (if you're eligible).
But know that Revlimid is not the only maintenance therapy drug option. For high-risk multiple myeloma patients, for instance, Dr. Al Baghdadi has seen that the drug Velcade can be a suitable option.
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"The quality of the data in [higher-risk] patients is not as good as the data with Revlimid, but data in high risk patients also show that a drug like Velcade can improve disease control and survival," he said. "So you'll see some patients going on maintenance with Velcade and occasionally with both drugs, Velcade and Revlimid."
Additionally, Dr. Al Baghdadi said researchers are looking at adding more drugs for people in maintenance therapy.
"For example, we're looking at adding a drug called Ninlaro to patients on Revlimid, especially if they don't achieve MRD [minimal residual disease] negativity while on revlimid," he said. "We're also looking at other antibodies like daratumumab (sold under the brand name Darzalex) also during maintenance."
Which Multiple Myeloma Drugs For Maintenance Therapy: Are There Options?
Darzalex is a type of targeted monoclonal antibody. Monoclonal antibodies are drugs that target specific proteins on cancer cells. The CD 38 protein is the target for Darzalex.
But as recently as October 25, 2022, the drug Tecvayli was FDA approved to treat adults with multiple myeloma that came back or did not get better after treatment with at least four other anticancer therapies. Tecvayli is a type of bispecific monoclonal antibody that binds to a protein called CD3, which is found on T cells, and a protein called BCMA, which is found on myeloma cells and some B cells.
Bispecific antibodies, in general, are a type of monoclonal antibody that targets two different types of molecules, or antigens. They are engineered to bind to myeloma cells and either kill them or mark them for destruction by your immune system. This type of treatment works by stimulating an innate immune response against specific tumor-associated antigens.
"There are probably 20 or 30 of these antibodies in development for multiple myeloma, as we speak," Dr. C. Ola Landgren, the leader of the Experimental Therapeutics Program and leader of Myeloma Service at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, told SurvivorNet prior to the Tecvayli approval. "Many of these drugs are just amazing."
Overall, know that you have options as a multiple myeloma patient. And there isn't necessarily one clear treatment path when it comes to this disease. Make sure you have a lengthy conversation with your doctors to decide what options are best for you.
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