Six years ago, Todd Hirai learned why all the physical therapy he’d received for his baseball injury hadn’t eased his back pain. He hadn’t wrenched his back in the batting cage after all, said the scan glowing on his orthopedist’s computer screen. Hirai saw the bright spots scattered across the MRI, lighting up his bones like a nightmarish swarm of fireflies. It looked, explained the orthopedist, like cancer.

As the Seattle-area father of three tried to wrap his mind around this news, a medical team was waiting just outside the door to admit him into the hospital and start the process of trying to save his life from what was swiftly confirmed to be multiple myeloma.

Hirai soon learned that his cancer’s genetic abnormalities placed him in a high-risk category, one that is associated with an average of less than three years’ survival. After discussions with his doctors, Hirai enrolled in a clinical trial through Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center of a complex combination protocol, one that researchers believed might help patients like him.

A multitude of medical advances over the past decade have resulted in big improvements in treatment for myeloma — but less so for the high-risk form. As research on this approach continues, these early findings will help inform treatment options that physicians in the Fred Hutch/University of Washington Cancer Consortium can offer to newly diagnosed high-risk patients, the investigators said.

Read the full story by Susan Keown about myeloma from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center