Unmet Needs Researchers are Investigating in Chronic Myeloid Leukemia

Michael J. Mauro, MD, a hematologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses the unmet needs of patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) and what potential therapies are being investigated currently for this patient population.

Mauro believes there is still work to be done in the CML patient population, such as patients who are highly resistant to treatment. Many patients will go through multiple lines of tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) therapy because of intolerance, resistance, or a mix of both. Right now, there are several therapies in development for these patients. Mauro believes the most notable is asciminib (ABL001), an investigational allosteric BCR-ABL inhibitor.

Patients with CML who progress to blast phase or patients who present with high-risk or advanced disease can be difficult to treat with TKIs only, according to Mauro, and so there needs to be a better cohesion between the conventional chemotherapy agents with the most effective TKIs to optimize treatment for patients with advanced-phase CML. The treatment algorithms still need to be rectified in this setting in regard to stem cell transplantation and long-term strategies so the community of physicians know how to best treat these patients, Mauro concludes.

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