Treatment of minimal residual disease in AML patients

Gail Roboz, MD from Weill Cornell Medicine discusses minimal residual disease (MRD) found in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients. According to Dr Roboz the biology of the remaining leukemia cells may not be similar to the bulk disease that was eliminated with initial therapy. Currently there are efforts to characterize and quantify the remaining cells, with the hopes to determine whether existing or novel treatments can be used to lower their number to below the threshold level required for stem cell transplants. Furthermore, stem cell transplants are dramatically less effective if there is minimal residual disease detected so any therapy to reduce these cells may confer an advantage. Recorded at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the British Society of Haematology (BSH) and International Society of Hematology (ISH), in Glasgow, Scotland.

Original story posted to Video Journal of Hematological Oncology [go]