Incorporating Pediatric Regimens in the Treatment of ALL

Mark R. Litzow, MD, chair, professor of medicine, Division of Hematology, Mayo Clinic, discusses the talk he gave on initial treatment options for patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) during the National Comprehensive Cancer Network 2022 Annual Congress: Hematologic Malignancies.

After years of little to no new developments in the ALL space, experts have discovered that young adults up to the age of 40 with ALL can tolerate pediatric treatment regimens. When providing patients with additional doses of these agents, better survival outcomes have been observed.

As a result of young adult and pediatric patients being able to tolerate these intensive regimens, they are now beginning to be incorporated into treatment for this patient population.

Transcription:

0:08 | I focused in my talk about initial treatment options for patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia and risk stratification. Some of the new developments in ALL, and there have been many that have been very exciting for us after many years of stagnation where we did not have a lot of new treatments, one of the important things we learned is that in younger adults with ALL, they can tolerate treatment programs that have been used in children, so pediatric regimens. These regimens contain more drugs like vincristine, asparaginase, and corticosteroids.

0:50 | It seems that additional doses of those drugs have helped improve the outcomes in children and now we have found in young adults. Young adults include patients up to 40 and in some circumstances, up to 50 or 55. They can tolerate these intensive regimens and we see better outcomes, so better survival, and less relapse. We have been incorporating those types of regimens into the treatment of younger patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.