Meet the Speaker
Pieter Sonneveld, MD, PhD
Pieter Sonneveld, MD, PhD, is professor of hematology at Erasmus MC Rotterdam and a principal investigator at the Erasmus MC Cancer Institute's Department of Hematology in the Netherlands, where his research focuses on multiple myeloma, novel therapeutic agents, and mechanisms of drug resistance.
He earned his medical degree from Erasmus University Rotterdam in 1977 and completed a PhD in Adriamycin pharmacology at the University of Leiden in 1980, followed by a Fogarty Fellowship at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. He chaired the Hematology Department at Erasmus MC from 2011 to 2017, founded the European Myeloma Network and served as its chairman, and held leadership roles with the European Hematology Association as a board member (2011-2017) and president (2017-2019).
Since 2005, his research group has studied proteasome inhibitors, immunomodulatory agents, anti-CD38 antibodies, and CAR T-cell therapies and coordinates major clinical trials through the HOVON and European Myeloma Network (EMN) consortia. His honors include the Robert Kyle Award (2015), the Hubertus Wald Award (2019), and the International Waldenström Lifetime Achievement Award (2022).
The PERSEUS clinical trial This trial is among the first to test stopping part of treatment based on MRD status rather than a fixed schedule—patients had to be both MRD-negative and free of any signs of progression before discontinuation was considered. Roughly three-quarters of eligible patients reached that bar, and notably, about 55% of them stayed MRD-negative through the full follow-up period, close to 4 years.
For pharmacy teams, that durability is the more clinically meaningful number than the initial conversion rate—it suggests that for a meaningful subset of patients, a well-timed stop isn't just feasible; it holds. The deeper responses seen with daratumumab-based induction followed by lenalidomide maintenance, compared to VRd followed by lenalidomide, appear to be the main driver of both the higher MRD-negativity rates and how long they last, though work is ongoing to identify any underlying biological differences in these patients.
Monitoring cadence is the practical detail pharmacists will want to flag for their teams: MRD testing currently runs at 6 months and then annually, using bone marrow sampling—an invasive test that limits how often it can reasonably be repeated. Less invasive approaches, including mass spectrometry-based monitoring, are being evaluated as a way to follow these patients more closely without repeat bone marrow procedures, with data expected in the coming months.
Just as important as the testing schedule is what happens when a patient does progress: early identification of relapse—not just biochemical markers, but clinical signals—and prompt initiation of second-line therapy were both associated with better outcomes, including overall survival, in this population. That reinforces a role for pharmacists and care teams in recognizing early signs of progression and moving quickly once a next line of therapy is indicated, rather than waiting for more advanced disease markers to confirm what's already happening.
