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Thalidomide, the first clinically available immunomodulatory drug, reaches monotherapy treatment response in about 1/ 3 of significantly pretreated patients with multiple myeloma, and in combination with glucocorticoids approximately 50% response rate. After addition of conventional cytostatic into the triple combination, therapeutic response is achieved in 80% of untreated patients or about 60% of pretreated patients. Therapeutic response is achieved even in 1/3 of patients with refractory multiple myeloma resistant to other available treatment. With regard to the frequency of adverse effects, particularly peripheral polyneuropathy, its use as maintenance therapy was nearly abandoned. The combination of thalidomide and bortezomib has a high therapeutic potential that was accompanied by a high frequency of peripheral polyneuropathy in entry studies. After optimizing bortezomib schedule and route of administration, which lead to significant reduction in the frequency of polyneuropathy, this combination is currently a very interesting therapeutic alternative for clinical practice. This is one of the most economically available treatment regimens combining the benefits of two major drug classes in the treatment of multiple myeloma - proteasome inhibitor and imunumodulatory drugs. There is also a renewed interest in thalidomide following sharp decline in its use in recent years in the Czech Republic. Comprehensive work is focused on summarizing the longterm experience with thalidomide, with special reference to combination with bortezomib.

Multiple myeloma, a plasma cell malignancy, still remains a hard-to-treat hematological disease that desperately needs new therapy targeting plasmocytes but also the bone marrow microenvironment. Clonal plasmocytes are characterized by increased regulation of ubiquitin-proteasome pathway which augments their sensitivity to proteasome inhibitors. Treatment strategies based on proteasome inhibitors belong to the era of new drugs, and they have become increasingly important for treatment of multiple myeloma in recent years. Bortezomib became the first proteasome inhibitor approved for the treatment of multiple myeloma and showed remarkable anti-myeloma activity. However, despite its high efficiency, a large proportion of patients have became bortezomib resistant. The second generation of proteasome inhibitors - carfilzomib, marizomib and MLN9708 - were developed in an effort to overcome bortezomib-resistance and find proteasome inhibitors with a better toxic profile. These drugs brought a chance that multiple myeloma would become a chronic disease.