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It’s been decades since Vincent Rajkumar, a multiple myeloma physician and researcher at the Mayo Clinic, remembers first feeling that he was treating patients far too late. Myeloma, he explained in an interview, is unique among cancers in that it is only considered cancer once patients experience organ damage like renal failure and bone lesions. It would be better, he believed, to start treating patients sooner — rather than watching and waiting until after all that suffering has begun. (Chen, 12/9)

British drugmaker GSK (GSK.L) said on Monday its experimental cancer drug Blenrep in combination with other treatments reduced the risk of death by 42% in multiple myeloma, a common type of blood cancer, at or after first relapse compared to an existing treatment. An interim analysis of data from a trial dubbed 'DREAMM-7' showed the drug in combination with the drug bortezomib plus the steroid dexamethasone showed statistically significant overall survival results compared to a standard of care daratumumab combination as a second line or later treatment of relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma, GSK said. (12/9)

Women going in for routine mammograms are increasingly being screened with a new type of imaging tool: digital breast tomosynthesis. The new technology, which is sometimes referred to as 3-D mammography or D.B.T., lets doctors look at the breast in greater detail. Some research has shown that it can detect slightly more cancers with fewer false positive results than conventional mammograms — though it’s still too early to know whether these benefits will translate to fewer cancer deaths. (Agrawal, 12/9)

AbbVie's (ABBV.N) experimental drug to treat early Parkinson's disease helped significantly improve patients' ability to carry out daily tasks such as eating and walking, months after the drugmaker disclosed its success in a separate study. The late-stage study tested the safety and efficacy of flexible doses of the once-daily drug, tavapadon, ranging from 5 milligrams (mg) to 15 mg, as a monotherapy, the company said on Monday. (Sunny, 12/9)

On the 77th floor of One World Trade Center, in an office with panoramic views of Manhattan, executives from pharma and biotech companies like Regeneron and Merck heard the pitch: Please help us study GLP-1s in Parkinson’s disease. (Aguilar, 12/10)

An analysis of global antimicrobial sales data suggests the decline in outpatient antimicrobial consumption (AMC) during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic was transient and likely linked to non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), such as lockdowns, Japanese researchers reported last week in Clinical Microbiology and Infection. ... While several studies have documented global decreases in AMC in 2020 and 2021, the persistence of the downward trend is unknown at the global level. (Dall, 12/9)