Treatment of minimal residual disease in AML patients
Posted: July 15, 2016 Filed under: Leukemia News, Patient Education, Physician Presentations, Uncategorized | Tags: Acute Myeloid Leukemia, Blood Disorders, cancer, Gail Roboz, hematology, Leukemia, Weill Cornell, Weill Cornell Leukemia Program Comments Off on 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]
Not just a shot in the dark
Posted: July 1, 2016 Filed under: Clinical Trials, Laboratory Research, Leukemia News, Patient Education, Physician Presentations, Uncategorized | Tags: Blood Disorders, cancer awareness, Gail Roboz MD, leukemia clinical trials, Leukemia Treatment, Moonshot, Weill Cornell Comments Off on Not just a shot in the darkIn many ways, it’s a science success story: 8-year-old boy with a rare form of brain cancer is treated by one of the world’s leading experts in the disease, who collaborates with a pioneering precision medicine institute to sequence his cancer and create a first-of-its-kind tumor model replica in the lab, allowing for further analysis and treatment testing without risk of harm to the child.
Upon analysis, the physician-scientist discovers a mutation previously not known to be linked to that type of cancer — and it happens to be in the protein that his colleague has spent a career studying. He contacts the colleague to ask if there is a drug to target the protein, and it arrives the next day. Applied to the tumor model, the drug effectively kills 80-90 percent of the diseased cells.
If only the story ended there.
Unfortunately, although the drug has been approved by the FDA, it cannot be used on the young patient because it has never been tested in children, and the pharmaceutical company controlling the drug is not willing to take the risk.
“We now start the gymnastics of trying to get permission from the FDA based on compassionate use,” said Jeffrey Greenfield, M.D., Ph.D. “We’ve done it before, and it takes anywhere from 3-6 months. This boy doesn’t have 3-6 months.”
Greenfield, a neurosurgeon at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian, shared the anecdote at a special event held at Weill Cornell Medicine on June 29, one of 270 across the United States convened by Vice President Joe Biden in tandem with a national summit at Howard University in Washington, DC
Biden invited regional participants to discuss the goals of the “Cancer Moonshot” mission, announced in January by President Barack Obama as a way to accelerate cancer research, foster data sharing and collaboration, and improve patient access to care — all on a five-year timeline.
Greenfield said his story summed up some of the challenges the nation will face in trying to achieve such an ambitious goal.
“The promise of precision medicine, which is enormous and which we have all bought into, doesn’t deliver in this case,” Greenfield said. “We’ve done all the work that we’ve promised to do, and we still have hurdles. The science is great, the medicine is great, but we’ve got to figure out a way to bridge the chasm between academia, pharma and clinic.”
The future is now
Greenfield was joined at the event by more than a dozen other distinguished researchers and physicians, as well as a standing-room only crowd of around 100.
Participants heard that in many ways, the future of medicine is already here. Silvia Formenti, M.D., discussed how she uses radiation therapy to turn patients’ own tumors into internal “vaccines,” and Ching Tung, Ph.D., director of the Molecular Imaging Innovations Institute described new ways of “seeing” cancer.
Neurosurgeon Mark Souweidane, M.D., spoke about the importance of developing new forms of drug delivery and working with industry to be able to integrate research and technology into the operating room. His colleagues Susan Pannullo, M.D., and Michael Kaplitt, M.D., Ph.D., explained stereotactic radiosurgery and the use of ultrasound technology to poke holes in the blood-brain barrier.
“These are ways we can use novel non-invasive technologies that will put us as surgeons out of business, unfortunately, but will help heal the world,” Kaplitt said.
Gail Roboz, M.D., director of the Weill Cornell Leukemia Program, described immunotherapy, and in particular the use of CAR-T cells as an emerging therapy.
“The idea isn’t new, “Roboz said. “What’s new is that we can actually do it, we are able to finally do things that were Jetsons level before.”
“In 2016, we are at an amazing inflection point in cancer therapy,” added neurosurgeon Rohan Ramakrishna, M.D. “It’s one thing to say you want to accomplish big change in five years, it’s another to be able to do that.”
But he added that the time it takes to get discoveries from bench to bedside is still too long. We need to innovate, Ramakrishna said, and we need to incentivize high-risk research.
To read the full story [go]
Dr. Desai – Treatment for Intermediate & High Risk MDS
Posted: March 10, 2016 Filed under: CRUSH!!MDS, Patient Education, Physician Presentations, Uncategorized | Tags: Blood Disorders, hematology, Leukemia Treatment, MDS, MDS Treatment, Myelodysplastic Syndrome, Pinkal Desai, Weill Cornell Comments Off on Dr. Desai – Treatment for Intermediate & High Risk MDSDr. Desai discusses approved treatments for intermediate and high risk MDS. For more information visit crushmds.org.
Dr. Gail Roboz Discusses Challenges and Progress in Acute Myeloid Leukemia
Posted: November 6, 2014 Filed under: Clinical Trials, Leukemia News, Patient Education, Physician Presentations Leave a comment“AML continues to languish at the bottom of the survival curve. The lymphoid diseases are just doing so much better,” said Roboz, associate professor of Medicine and director of the Leukemia Program at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University and the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.
That is not to say, however, that research into myeloid diseases is “completely languishing,” Roboz stressed in her presentation at the 2014 Chemotherapy Foundation Symposium. Real progress has been achieved in understanding AML’s biology, and new targeted agents are being explored to improve outcomes.
For example, Roboz noted, mutations in FLT-3 (FMS-like tyrosine kinase 3) are associated with highly proliferative leukemia and adverse outcomes, while mutations in NPM1 (nucleophosmin 1) and biallelic mutations in CEBPA (CCAAT enhancer-binding protein a) have significantly more favorable survival.
“Although the mechanism of action of AML is much better understood, it’s not simple, and that’s the problem,” Roboz stressed.
Another challenge in treating patients with AML—which Roboz noted results in 10,000 deaths of the approximately 13,000 cases diagnosed each year—is whether more cases will be diagnosed, as patients survive other cancers. “We know that it’s associated with chemo and radiation exposure,” as well as other known environmental risk factors, genetic abnormalities, and benign and hematologic diseases also associated with AML.
Improving on Standard of Care
Although the current cytarabine-based 7+3 regimen remains the standard of care, “we do understand our weapon a little better, and this has certainly resulted in some survival benefit,” said Roboz, adding that this “much-worked-on regimen can be given to much older patients.”
Roboz, who will be leading an AML education session at the American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting in San Francisco next month, reviewed successive efforts by the German AML Study Group “to make chemo better,” through variations on (and additions to) the 7+3 dosing regimen, but these have led to what she described as “superimposable curves.”
“Is it in fact a triumph of hope over experience to add things on to 7+3?” This is a useful question, she elaborated, because “is it that we’re adding new things that aren’t new enough or are we adding them in the wrong place? It’s certainly concerning that all of these efforts over all of these years led to superimposable graphs.”
Other agents are pending, said Roboz, including clofarabine which, she said, “definitely works in AML, but we can’t quite get it right to be where it needs to be an approved drug for AML. We’re anxiously awaiting whether it can ‘beat’ 7+3,” she said.
A phase II study of CPX-351,1 which, Roboz explained, “is taking 7+3 and trying to make it better. This is a formulation that holds cytarabine and daunorubicin in a fixed 5:1 ratio, and we’re waiting to see whether what looked like a benefit in overall survival in a very difficult-to-treat population of secondary AML patients will hold up in a randomized trial, and whether taking the best regimen that we have and making the formulation better will get the job done.”
Roboz also hopes to have data available soon from the multicenter Alliance trial, looking at decitabine versus decitabine plus bortezomib in a 10-day schedule.
Looking ahead, said Roboz, “We have epigenetics, we have targeted therapies, personalized medicine. We must be on the way to improved therapeutic options.”
“Hope springs eternal. We want these agents to work and to synergize with our ‘best regimens,’” she said.
- 1. Lancet JE, Cortes JE, Hogge DE, et al. Phase 2 trial of CPX-351, a fixed 5:1 molar ratio of cytarabine/daunorubicin, vs cytarabine/daunorubicin in older adults with untreated AML [published online March 31, 2014]. Blood.
http://www.onclive.com/conference-coverage/cfs-2014/Roboz-Discusses-Progress-Challenges-in-AML
Dr. Gail Roboz reviews existing and evolving approaches to the treatment of patients with AML for Medscape Education
Posted: May 29, 2013 Filed under: Patient Education, Physician Presentations | Tags: Acute Myeloid Leukemia, AML, Gail Roboz, Gail Roboz MD Comments Off on Dr. Gail Roboz reviews existing and evolving approaches to the treatment of patients with AML for Medscape Education To view the entire presentation and slideshow, click here.
Leukemia Program Nurse Practitioner, Sandy Allen-Bard, Moderates Educational Program on CML
Posted: March 5, 2013 Filed under: Patient Education, Physician Presentations, Uncategorized | Tags: Blood Disorders, cancer treatment, chemotherapy, Chronic Myeloid Leukemia, CML, Leukemia, Weill Cornell, Weill Cornell Medical College Comments Off on Leukemia Program Nurse Practitioner, Sandy Allen-Bard, Moderates Educational Program on CML Leukemia Program Nurse Practitioner, Sandy Allen-Bard, moderated a Medscape Eduation program titled, The Nurse View: Common Clinical Challenges and Best Practices in Chronic Myeloid Leukemia. The view the program (which requires that you create a free Medscape account), click here.
Dr. Gail Roboz Makes 6th Appearance on Good Morning America
Posted: January 14, 2013 Filed under: Accolades, Physician Presentations, Uncategorized | Tags: Blood Disorders, Gail Roboz, Gail Roboz MD, MDS, Myelodysplastic Syndrome, New York Presbyterian, Weill Cornell Comments Off on Dr. Gail Roboz Makes 6th Appearance on Good Morning AmericaTo view the interview, click here.
Dr. Gail Roboz Appears on Good Morning America
Posted: November 20, 2012 Filed under: Accolades, Leukemia News, Physician Presentations | Tags: Blood Disorders, Gail Roboz, Gail Roboz MD, MDS, Myelodysplastic Syndrome, New York Presbyterian, Weill Cornell Comments Off on Dr. Gail Roboz Appears on Good Morning AmericaDr. Gail Roboz was interviewed Tuesday, November 20th about Myelodysplastic Syndrome. Watch the interview below.
Dr. Gail Roboz Interviewed on Good Morning America
Posted: October 12, 2012 Filed under: Accolades, Physician Presentations | Tags: Blood Disorders, Gail Roboz, Gail Roboz MD, MDS, Myelodysplastic Syndrome Comments Off on Dr. Gail Roboz Interviewed on Good Morning AmericaTo see the interview, click here.
Dr. Gail Roboz Interviewed on Good Morning America about Myelodysplastic Syndrome
Posted: August 31, 2012 Filed under: Leukemia News, Physician Presentations | Tags: Blood Disorders, Gail Roboz, Gail Roboz MD, MDS, Myelodysplastic Syndrome, New York Presbyterian, Weill Cornell Medical College Comments Off on Dr. Gail Roboz Interviewed on Good Morning America about Myelodysplastic Syndrome To view the video, click here.