Tag Archive for: AML

Understanding Risk in AML: How Molecular Testing Affects Treatment Options

Understanding Risk in AML: How Molecular Testing Affects Treatment Options from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

How does molecular testing impact acute myeloid leukemia (AML) treatment options? Dr. Pinkal Desai discusses molecular testing and how results may help determine the best treatment path for patients.

Dr. Pinkal Desai is Assistant Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College and a hematologist specializing in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) at Weill Cornell Medicine. Learn more about Dr. Desai, here.

Download Program Resource Guide

See More From INSIST! AML

Related Resources:

Genetic Mutations That Impact AML Prognosis and Treatment 

Should AML Molecular Testing Be Repeated?

Insist! AML Resource Guide

Transcript:

Katherine:      

Dr. Desai, is there a high-risk and a low-risk AML? And if so, what are the indicators?

Dr. Desai:                   

So, in terms of when we talk about risk of leukemia, many patients, when they come, they frequently ask what stage this is, which is generally not how leukemia is categorized, unlike lung cancer, or breast cancer, or any of the solid tumors. Leukemia is in your blood and in your bone marrow, so it’s kind of like all or none to some extent. When we talk about risk in leukemia, we’re talking about what is the chance of this leukemia coming back in the future. So, is the chance high, intermediate, or low?

And that’s how we categorize leukemia, into these three sort of risk categories, low risk, intermediate risk, and high risk. These risk categories are made up.

We decide these based on information from two aspects. One is the chromosomes, which we talked about. There are certain good risks of chromosomal abnormalities as well, where, for example, poor binding factor leukemias, where these leukemias tend to respond very well to chemotherapy. There are some higher risk, that the chances are higher to come back. And then, the middle category of intermediate risk, where it’s sort of in the middle.

The molecular subtype, or the molecular classification of AML is extremely, extremely relevant, because it gives you pretty much your own signature, and the patient sort of specific, personalized risk of whether this is going to have a high, intermediate, or a low risk to come back.

So, it’s a combination of chromosomes, and the molecular subtype, which is extremely important in figuring out the risk category.

Now, in the course of the treatment and decision-making of leukemia, we don’t have – we’ll have the chromosome information quite early, usually within the first two to three days, but the molecular information, some of it comes back pretty fast, like in a couple days from the testing. But many of these tests, the full panel comes back about 14 days after we do the original bone marrow biopsy. Some of these decisions on whether this is high risk or low risk is relevant in the long run. These decisions happen later, and you don’t have to wait for the treatment, obviously. This is more for what happens after a patient goes into remission.

But there are certain molecular genes that are very important in deciding treatment up front, and those we expedite, and they are back usually before treatment decision is made. For example, FLT3 ITD or FLT3 TKB.

These are two genes where the up-front treatment decision changes, depending on the presence or absence of this gene. So, you really, really do want to know this information early on.

Chromosomes you absolutely need it before treatment begins, because there are several options of leukemia treatment that are specific to certain chromosome subtypes. So, that’s like the basic information you need to have before making any treatment plans.

Key AML Testing for Better Care: Understanding Prognosis and Treatment Choices

Key AML Testing for Better Care: Understanding Prognosis and Treatment Choices from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

After an acute myeloid leukemia (AML) diagnosis, additional tests must follow to determine prognosis and treatment options. Dr. Pinkal Desai explains key tests that aid in choosing optimal care for each patient. 

Dr. Pinkal Desai is Assistant Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College and a hematologist specializing in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) at Weill Cornell Medicine. Learn more about Dr. Desai, here.

Download Program Resource Guide

See More From INSIST! AML

Related Resources:

Being Pro-Active in Your Care: Key AML Testing to Advocate For 

Should AML Molecular Testing Be Repeated?

Confused About AML Genetic Testing and Treatment? What You Need to Know

Transcript:

Katherine:      

Other than a complete blood count, what additional testing should take place following an AML diagnosis?

Dr. Desai:                

So, a blood count or CBC is just a hint that there might be AML. It’s certainly not diagnostic.

But when you see that there are some abnormalities in blood count, and there might be the presence of these immature cells or blasts in circulation, there is suspicion that this is acute myeloid leukemia. The diagnosis, the gold standard for diagnosis, is a bone marrow biopsy, which is a procedure that can be done out-patient or in the hospital, depending on where the patient is. It takes about 15 minutes, where we take a sample out of the hip bone and look at the cells. This is where bone marrow is being made, so you’re going to exactly where the problem lies, and seeing if the blast count is increased.

So, the diagnosis of AML is established when the blast count is over 20 percent in the bone marrows. And normally, it needs to be less than 5 percent.

And if it’s over 20 percent, that’s the diagnosis of AML. Whether it’s over 20 percent in the bone marrow or in the peripheral blood.

It doesn’t matter, one way or the other. This is a diagnosis of AML, but you do need a bone marrow biopsy to confirm diagnosis of AML.

Katherine:                  

What about genetic or molecular testing? Is that done?

Dr. Desai:                   

AML diagnosis is just one part or the first step of saying somebody has leukemia. There is a slew of other tests that are important, and we generally consider, within the genetic tests, we generally consider two kinds of testing. One is the cytogenetics, or the karyotype analysis, which looks at the chromosomes in our bodies.

So, leukemia can be associated with big chromosomal changes, and that’s important to recognize. And the second one is the molecular testing, and we’ll go over both of them.

The chromosomes, or the karyotypic analysis, the vast majority of leukemia patients have a normal chromosome type, but there are certain recurrent abnormalities in chromosomes that we see in leukemia, and that’s important to know for a variety of reasons: treatment decisions, prognostication.

And the second part of it, the molecular, these are actually genetic routine analysis, and this is not somebody – it doesn’t mean, when we say genetic testing, it’s not the patient’s own normal genetic type. So, we’re not looking for what they have inherited. Most of leukemia is actually a random event, and it’s not inherited. We’re talking about genetic damage that the leukemia cells have within themselves.

It gives us the signature of the leukemia, and it helps us understand what genetic abnormalities are present in the leukemia. There are several panels, 50 to 100 genes, but there’s usually recurrent genetic damage that leukemia cells have.

And you want to know that, because again, like karyotype, this is important in treatment decisions, and also in the prognostication and prediction in the future.

AML Treatment Decisions: What’s Right for You? Resource Guide

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AML Treatment Decisions: What’s Right for You?

AML Treatment Decisions: What’s Right for You? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

When considering therapy for acute myeloid leukemia (AML), what determines the best treatment for YOU? In this Pro-Active AML Patient Toolkit webinar, Dr. Pinkal Desai reviews factors that affect AML treatment decisions, current AML treatments and emerging research.

Dr. Pinkal Desai is Assistant Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College and a hematologist specializing in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) at Weill Cornell Medicine. Learn more about Dr. Desai, here.

Download Program Resource Guide

See More From The Pro-Active AML Patient Toolki

Related Resources:

How Is Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) Treated?

Effective AML Combination Treatment

Genetic Mutations That Affect AML Prognosis and Treatment

Transcript:

Katherine:      

Hello and welcome. I’m Katherine Banwell, your host for today’s program. Today we’ll discuss how you can be proactive in your AML care and work with your healthcare team to find the best treatment path for you. Joining me today is Dr. Pinkal Desai. Welcome. Would you please introduce yourself?

Dr. Desai:       

Hello. I’m Pinkal Desai, a leukemia physician at Weill Cornell Medicine, and I’m happy to join this program and help in any way possible.

Katherine:      

Thank you. A reminder that this program is not a substitute for medical advice. Please refer to your healthcare team about what might be best for you. Well, Dr. Desai, let’s start with the basics. What exactly is acute myeloid leukemia?

Dr. Desai:       

So, acute myeloid leukemia or AML is a malignancy or a cancer of the bone marrow. So, we all know that bone marrow is something that’s present in all of our bones.

It is the collocal factory, where all of our cells are being made. White cells, hemoglobin, platelets and all of our rib cages, thigh, big bones, think about that, and there’s bone marrow in it. And sometimes, and we don’t always know the reason why AML occurs, and we’ll talk about that later, I’m sure, but what happens is some stem cells or mother cells, as we can call them, whose normal job is to make a mature progeny, something goes wrong. There’s genetic damage that happens, and what ends up happening is this AML blasts, or immature cells, that sort of stop making mature progeny. And what they start doing is dividing in an immature phase.

And that takes up all the bone marrow function, the blood counts drop, patients can have pain, and usually, when you have a bone marrow that is not functioning, you’re at risk of infections, fatigue from the low blood count, and that’s many ways that AML presents. So, that’s pretty much how it begins, and it’s really acute in the sense that these cells are dividing rapidly, so you don’t sit around for months feeling nothing. Usually, it comes to the forefront in some way or the other.

Katherine:      

Other than a complete blood count, what additional testing should take place following an AML diagnosis?

Dr. Desai:       

So, a blood count or CBC is just a hint that there might be AML. It’s certainly not diagnostic.

But when you see that there are some abnormality in blood count, and there might be the presence of these immature cells or blasts in circulation, there is suspicion that this is acute myeloid leukemia. The diagnosis, the gold standard for diagnosis, is a bone marrow biopsy, which is a procedure that can be done out-patient or in the hospital, depending on where the patient is. It takes about 15 minutes, where we take a sample out of the hip bone, and look at the cells. This is where bone marrow is being made, so you’re going to exactly where the problem lies, and seeing if the blast count is increased.

So, the diagnosis of AML is established when the blast count is over 20% in the bone marrows. And normally, it needs to be less than 5%. And if it’s over 20%, that’s the diagnosis of AML. Whether it’s over 20% in the bone marrow or in the peripheral blood.

It doesn’t matter, one way or the other. This is a diagnosis of AML, but you do need a bone marrow biopsy to confirm diagnosis of AML.

Katherine:      

What about genetic or molecular testing? Is that done?

Dr. Desai:       

That is absolutely done, and it’s extremely important that this is done. AML diagnosis is just one part or the first step of saying somebody has leukemia. There is a slew of other tests that are important, and we generally consider, within the genetic tests, we generally consider two kinds of testing. One is the cytogenetics, or the karyotype analysis, which looks at the chromosomes in our bodies.

So, leukemia can be associated with big chromosomal changes, and that’s important to recognize. And the second one is the molecular testing, and we’ll go over both of them.

The chromosomes, or the karyotypic analysis, the vast majority of leukemia patients have a normal chromosome type, but there are certain recurrent abnormalities in chromosomes that we see in leukemia, and that’s important to know for a variety of reasons; Treatment decisions, prognostication.

And the second part of it, the molecular, these are actually genetic routine analysis, and this is not somebody – it doesn’t mean, when we say genetic testing, it’s not the patient’s own normal genetic type. So, we’re not looking for what they have inherited. Most of leukemia is actually a random event, and it’s not inherited. We’re talking about genetic damage that the leukemia cells have within themselves.

It gives us the signature of the leukemia, and it helps us understand what genetic abnormalities are present in the leukemia. There are several panels, 50 to 100 genes, but there’s usually recurrent genetic damage that leukemia cells have.

And you want to know that, because again, like karyotype, this is important in treatment decisions, and also in the prognostication and prediction in the future.

Katherine:      

Dr. Desai, is there a high risk and a low risk AML? And if so, what are the indicators?

Dr. Desai:       

So, in terms of when we talk about risk of leukemia, many patients, when they come, they frequently ask what stage this is, which is generally not how leukemia is categorized, unlike lung cancer, or breast cancer, or any of the solid tumors. Leukemia is in your blood and in your bone marrow, so it’s kind of like all or none to some extent. When we talk about risk in leukemia, we’re talking about what is the chance of this leukemia coming back in the future. So, is the chance high, intermediate, or low?

And that’s how we categorize leukemia, into these three sort of risk categories, low risk, intermediate risk, and high risk. These risk categories are made up.

We decide these based on information from two aspects. One is the chromosomes, which we talked about. There are certain good risks of chromosomal abnormalities as well, where, for example, poor binding factor leukemias, where these leukemias tend to respond very well to chemotherapy. There are some higher risk, that the chances are higher to come back. And then, the middle category of intermediate risk, where it’s sort of in the middle.

The molecular subtype, or the molecular classification of AML is extremely, extremely relevant, because it gives you pretty much your own signature, and the patient sort of specific, personalized risk of whether this is going to have a high, intermediate, or a low risk to come back.

So, it’s a combination of chromosomes, and the molecular subtype, which is extremely important in figuring out the risk category.

Now, in the course of the treatment and decision-making of leukemia, we don’t have – we’ll have the chromosome information quite early, usually within the first two to three days, but the molecular information, some of it comes back pretty fast, like in a couple days from the testing. But many of these tests, the full panel comes back about 14 days after we do the original bone marrow biopsy. Some of these decisions on whether this is high risk or low risk is relevant in the long run. These decisions happen later, and you don’t have to wait for the treatment, obviously. This is more for what happens after a patient goes into remission.

But there are certain molecular genes that are very important in deciding treatment up front, and those we expedite, and they are back usually before treatment decision is made. For example, FLT3 ITD or FLT3 TKB.

These are two genes where the up-front treatment decision changes, depending on the presence or absence of this gene. So, you really, really do want to know this information early on.

Chromosomes you absolutely need it before treatment begins, because there are several options of leukemia treatment that are specific to certain chromosome subtypes. So, that’s like the basic information you need to have before making any treatment plans.

Katherine:

Dr. Desai, when deciding on a treatment approach with a patient, I imagine you have to consider a number of factors, like a patient’s age and their overall health. Let’s walk through these considerations, and we’ll start with treatment goals. What does that mean, exactly?

Dr. Desai:       

So, the first treatment goal is to get into remission. Patients with leukemia will have abnormal blood counts, they don’t feel well, they have a risk of infection, and all of that is only going to get better if you can get into remission.

And remission means that the bone marrow has a blast count less than 5%. Now, remember, we talked about if it was over 20, it’s considered diagnosis of AML. So, we want it gone under 5%, preferably zero. And we want all the blood counts that are abnormal to normalize back to what it would be for a normal person.

So, that’s the sort of definition of remission, and we want to get there, because ultimately, patients feel extremely good once they go into remission. They feel fine. The risk of infection goes away. It is absolutely important for long-term quality of life and survival. The first goal is to get into remission.

The second goal is to keep that remission going, for as long as possible, and also increase the chances of cure. So, going into remission does not mean that a patient is cured of leukemia. It means that we’ve taken the first step of knocking the leukemia down to its knees, but there are still a few cells that are hanging out and they’re still hiding. And the rest of the treatment and approach is to try to kill these cells and improve the chances of cure. So, and generally we say, once you get into remission you stay in remission, and when you’re past that five-year mark, we say leukemia is cured.

So, the first goal is get into remission. Second, keep yourself in remission, and that’s the whole sort of few things that we look at.

Now, in terms of how we decide treatment, so, there is the leukemia aspect of it, of the biologic indicators of leukemia, and there’s obviously the patient. Because everybody is different. There are patients who are coming in at various ages, like you said. Age is a very important thing to look at, because if you’re younger, the patient’s younger, then they’re usually eligible for what we call intensive chemotherapy. And if the patient is older, they may not be able to handle intensive chemotherapy, and in which case, the induction treatment or the first treatment, we call induction treatment, is basically the treatment we give to get you into remission. So, the induction treatment decision is based largely from a patient aspect on age.

Whether to go with intensive induction chemotherapy, or with lower intensive chemotherapy, depending on the person’s age.

Now, age is… There is a loose definition of what is considered older age, but we generally say over 75, patients cannot handle intensive chemotherapy. Under 75, under 70 for sure, they’re eligible for intensive chemotherapy, but it’s a biological continuum. So, there are patients who are much healthier, even at older ages, and much older at younger ages. So, we take into consideration not just the age, but also what else do they suffer from? Do they have other comorbidities? Is the heart okay? Do they have kidney damage? Do they have lung damage from previous comorbid illness? And that all goes into figuring out what kind of treatments can they handle.

And that’s the patient aspect of it. Then there’s the biologic aspect of the leukemia itself. Leukemia, the chromosome type. There are leukemias that respond extremely well to intensive chemotherapy. So, you’d figure that kind of treatment for it. Within the molecular subclassification, as we said, there are mutations in certain genes, like FLT3 and IDH. There are targeted treatments towards that, so we look at all of these genes to figure out what is the best mix of chemotherapy, targeted therapy, lower intensity therapy, to look at and combine so that we can have the best chance of being in remission, and to continue to be in remission.

Katherine:      

What is the patient’s role in this decision?

Dr. Desai:       

I think it’s important for patients to understand why the decisions are being made or what goes into the decision making. Because the patients would appreciate, if they know, that these are the genetic subtypes, and this would be the best sort of approach for them.

So, from a patient’s side, their role is, 1) to understand all the factors that go into the decision-making. And the second aspect, which is important, is their own values and their own decision on what treatment they would like to have.

So, there are – Sometimes, it’s very white and black. There are many times where it’s a gray zone, in the sense that there is a best treatment that’s available, that the oncologist would discuss, but it’s also possible to choose between two different kinds of therapy options.

If the patient is eligible, for example, for both intensive and non-intensive treatment, then what would they prefer based on what’s going on in their life? Whether they want to be hospitalized for 30 days for intensive induction or not? Do they want to do this out-patient? A lot of these things are important, and they have to be involved with this.

The third aspect, which is very important from a patient standpoint, is the need for transplant. So, patients who are younger and transplant eligible for leukemia that has a higher risk of coming back, we do recommend a stem cell transplant, so that the patients have to understand the process of stem cell transplant.

Sometimes, it’s slam dunk that a transplant is needed, but there are certain times where you could or could not go for it, and this is where the patient’s choices and values are extremely important, that once they hear all of this information, they would decide whether they should or should not go for stem cell transplant.

Katherine:      

So, in looking at a treatment plan, we’ve discussed the factors that go into that choice. And then, you’ve also just covered some treatment approaches and who they might be right for. So, you’ve talked about chemotherapy. You’ve talked about stem cell transplant. What about targeted therapies and also clinical trials? Where do they fit in?

Dr. Desai:       

Right now, if somebody’s diagnosed with new AML or newly diagnosed leukemia, and they are eligible for intensive chemotherapy of the approved agents, the one targeted therapy that does make a difference is midostaurin, which is a FLT3 inhibitor.

And patients who do have a FLT3 mutated leukemia, the standard of care is treatment with intensive chemotherapy in combination with Midostaurin. So, this is where chemotherapy’s combined with the backbone of the targeted therapy.

There are clinical trials of other targeted therapies that are being combined with frontline treatment. That frontline treatment might be intensive chemotherapy or more of the hypomethylating-based therapy, which is what we call lower intensity therapy. So, these are where the clinical trials are asking the question that can be just how Midostaurin was combined with chemotherapy.

Can we combine other targeted therapies with the backbones that currently exist? Chemotherapy or lower intensity hypomethylating agents. And can we combine them to improve the chances of going into remission and staying in remission?

I would say clinical trials are extremely important. Almost any stage of leukemia, whether it’s a new diagnosis, whether it’s second-line or relapse, it’s important, because these questions that are being asked are very relevant. How do we improve upon the existing known remission rates and survival in leukemia?

There are targeted therapies available for IDH inhibitors that are being combined. There is also a newly approved BCL2 inhibitor, venetoclax, which is used in combination with hypomethylating agents, that have shown survival advantage over single agent.

Hypomethylating agents, anybody who’s older, we are now combining the venetoclax with hypomethylating agents for what we call lower intensity induction treatment. And there are several others in the making. We have TP53 inhibitors.

As we talked about this, that leukemia is not one diagnosis, really. AML has several, several, several subtypes, and once we find out what makes that particular patient’s leukemia tick, and if you have a targeted inhibitor towards it, it’s logical that you would want to combine it with what the backbone of treatment is, and that’s where clinical trials are extremely important in asking most relevant questions and improving patient survival.

Katherine:    

Dr. Desai, I learned that oral azacitidine was recently FDA approved. What does that approval mean for patients and who is it right for?

Dr. Desai:       

So, oral azacitidine. For patients who may or may not know this, azacitidine has been approved in the IV or subcutaneous formulation for treatment of myelodysplastic syndrome and leukemia.

And this is, when I was saying that there is a lower intensity treatment of hypomethylating agents, that’s one of the drugs, azacitidine. And we use it for induction treatment in patients who do not qualify for intensive chemotherapy in AML.

So, oral azacitidine has been currently approved for older patients who have gone through intensive chemotherapy.

The trial was done in patients who did not have prior hypomethylating exposure of any kind, so people who had not seen any IV or subcutaneous azacitidine, they had leukemia, they get the intensive chemotherapy, finish the induction part, and the, what we call, consolidation part, which is the cleaning up with more additional cycles of chemotherapy.

Once that is done, the old standard of care was to not do anything, so these are obviously for patients who are not transplanted. So, once somebody, just to give a background on this, if somebody’s in remission and they’re transplant eligible, we make a decision whether they should go for transplant or they should get some more chemotherapy rounds. Both are consolidation of some kind, transplant or chemotherapy.

So, let’s say somebody went through induction, got into remission, and it was decided that they’re not candidates for transplant, or the patient didn’t want to go through a transplant, and you go for the consolidation. And the old standard was, after that, to do nothing. And oral azacitidine was tested in this situation, where half the patients got oral azacitidine as maintenance. It was given as pills, to take it for two weeks out of a 28-day cycle.

So, every month, you take it for 14 days. And half of them didn’t get the drug, oral azacitidine. And the drug was recently approved for FDA for having a survival advantage over the standard of care, which is to do nothing after consolidation is over.

So, in other words, this is currently available for patients, older patients, who’ve gone through induction chemotherapy, and/or consolidation, and then finished it. Then, you start this oral Azacitidine for keeping this remission going on longer. And that’s where the niche of this drug is.

It is very, very important to understand that oral Azacitidine has a very different kinetic in the body than IV azacitidine. So, I think people, many times, get confused between is IV the same as oral? They are totally different drugs and have a different way it affects the bone marrow.

So, they’re not to be interchanged for that indication. Oral azacitidine has been strictly approved for maintenance of remission, post-chemotherapy.

Katherine:      

Are there emerging approaches for treating AML that patients should know about?

Dr. Desai:       

So, there are several, and this is where’s lots of lots of new drugs that have been approved. A lot of drugs in pipeline. And within the categories, you can divide up where the advances are being made in several categories. So, the first one is, can you make a better induction regimen? So, how can you combine chemotherapy or hypomethylating agent plus venetoclax combination? Can you add more targeted agents to these bad points to improve the chances of remission and to keep the patients in remission? So, that’s one aspect of it, that this is important.

There’s obviously this whole concept of immunotherapy of AML, where there’s a lot of antibodies treatment or drugs that affect the immune modulation that are being used both in up-front leukemia, in many times in the older patients, itself. There are clinical trials, obviously.

And also, in the relapse setting, there are CAR T cells being used in leukemia therapy in the relapse setting. This is important, and a lot of new drugs are being used in the relapse setting. So, there’s this whole new sort of portfolio of clinical trials and treatment options for patients.

And the third aspect, which is, I would say, very important and as important as using better drugs, is to be able to quantify how the patients are responding to these treatments. Because we don’t want to start treatment, and then be blind about the kind of responses they’re getting.

There’s a whole new concept, what we call MRD measurements, or minimal residual disease, or measurable residual disease, MRD monitoring. That’s very important. So, when a patient starts with chemotherapy, and then you have subsequent bone marrows, even if they’re in remission, the quality of remission matters. The amount of MRD or amount of leukemia that’s left behind matters. And how do we direct our treatments to clean up that MRD? And how do we monitor this MRD, so that we can see what happens in the future? Many times, MRD can tell us that a patient’s going to relapse six months later. And how do we use that information?

So, these are very important aspects of monitoring of treatment that is important, and to measure MRD, not just by looking at the cells themselves, but using the patient’s own signature of molecular mutations that we found at baseline at the time of diagnosis. And how do we keep an eye on that? This is another new world and new ways to figure out how best to use new drugs, maintenance approaches, better consolidation approaches, and how do we use MRD to mix all of these together to get the best possible outcome for these patients.

Katherine:      

Once a patient has started treatment, how do you know if it’s working? How do you gauge that?

Dr. Desai:       

When a patient begins treatment, whatever their regimen is, for the most part, it takes about a month to get into remission. So, initially, with any treatment we would use, the blood counts will actually go down. Everything is down, down, down. That’s important, and it’s good, actually, because if we can’t wipe out these cells, then we’re not going to. The patient’s not going to go into remission. It’s good that these blood counts drop and they keep like that for a month.

After a month, generally, is the first look on an average to see where it is, and that kind of depends on the regimen. For intensive chemotherapy, we take a look in the middle, like Day 14, to see did we wipe out all the leukemia? And can we modify treatment so that whatever might be left behind will clean out? For lower intensity treatments, it’s about a month. So, that’s the first sort of real look at whether a patient is in remission.

And again, when I say, remission is a morphologic criteria that we see the blast count are less than 5%, and the cells are – the normal cells are back to what is considered within normal limits or normal for that person’s age. And the idea, at that time, is to not only just confirm remission, but like I was saying, how good is the remission.

So, that’s where MRD testing comes into play. You want to see what you want to find, even if it’s by small numbers, what is the percentage of leukemia that’s left behind. 0.01%, 0.001%. This is important.

The goal is to ultimately get that down to zero, and that’s how we use it during induction, even when they’re going through consolidation, we’re episodically monitoring with bone marrow or blood testing for some of these molecular mutations that is there continued response from where we started off? And once the treatment is done, we are still, we’re seeing these patients on a regular basis, sometimes doing bone marrow biopsies at regular intervals, to again make sure that there is continued response. And can we see something different, or is there an emerging population of cells that are worrisome, and how do we modify our treatments to try to kill these cells?

Katherine:      

So, if a patient isn’t feeling confident with their treatment plan or their care, do you recommend that they seek a second opinion or that they consult with a specialist?

Dr. Desai:       

Absolutely. So, AML is a hard disease and it’s scary. There’s always a lot of – a flurry of information flying, and the patients should feel very confident in their conversations. They should know that their disease is being treated the right way. And I call AML as, you know, obviously, we can treat relapsed disease, but generally, the best sort of way to make sure that somebody’s cured is to do it at the first go.

It’s very important that the first treatment of leukemia, the kind of induction therapy we choose, the consolidation, whether we have to go for a stem cell transplant or not. These are very important decisions, and they’re all made with the single goal of improved chances of cure for patients with leukemia.

Very important for patients to feel comfortable that these decisions are being made, that the oncologists are using all of this information, molecular, genetic, karyotype, looking at the patient’s clinical trials, because these are very, very important, to improve chances of cure. They have to feel comfortable, and if they don’t, they should absolutely seek a second opinion. I mean, leukemia is a complicated disease, and I would generally encourage patients to get an opinion from centers that treat a lot of leukemia and have stem cell transplant programs, as well.

Because it’s important. This all happens in continuum. So, if patients don’t feel comfortable, absolutely seek a second opinion.

Katherine:      

To close, Dr. Desai, what would you like to leave the audience with? Are you hopeful?

Dr. Desai:       

I am very hopeful. I think we’ve seen tremendous progress in leukemia, just over the last five years. We went from pretty much having two drugs to treat leukemia, chemotherapy, 7 and 3, and some hypomethylating agents, to a flurry of 15 new approvals. We now have targeted therapies. We have new clinical trials. I’m very hopeful that the combination of all of the things that we’re talking about, how to monitor patients, how to best utilize stem cell transplants. We’re entering a new age in leukemia, and I’m hopeful that with the advent of all of these drugs and what we know about leukemia, we can actually have a very good shot now to improve cure rates in leukemia.

And I would encourage patients: Leukemia is hard. Do not feel discouraged. There is always, once you know you have it, it’s best to seek opinion, find out what is the best treatment for you, keep a positive outlook, and then things will happen.

Katherine:      

Dr. Desai, thank you for joining us today.

Dr. Desai:       

My pleasure.

Katherine:      

And thank you to all of our partners.  Please fill out the survey that you’ll receive following the program. It helps us to plan future AML programming. To learn more about AML and to access tools to help you become a more proactive patient, visit powerfulpatients.org. I’m Katherine Banwell. Thanks for joining us.

Coronavirus & AML: What You Should Know

Coronavirus & AML: What You Should Know from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Dr. Naval Daver, an AML specialist, shares advice for AML patients related to precautions surrounding the coronavirus and discusses how the pandemic is affecting AML care.

Dr. Naval Daver is an Associate Professor in the Department of Leukemia at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. More about Dr. Daver here.

See More From INSIST! AML

Related Resources:

Genetic Mutations That Affect AML Prognosis and Treatment

Being Pro-Active In Your Care: Key AML Testing to Advocate For

Confused About AML Genetic Testing and Treatment? What You Need to Know

Transcript:

Katherine:                   

With COVID-19 affecting all our lives right now, what should AML patients be considering at this time?

Dr. Daver:                    

There’s a lot of guidelines on general approaches to managing things in COVID. And all of those guidelines heavily center, as we would think intuitively, on precautions.

Hand washing, minimizing contact, avoiding crowded places, trying to get treatment, potentially locally, if there are equivalent options available. We have not changed any of our frontline – we discuss this a lot every week in our faculty meeting.

This is discussed especially, as you know, because Houston currently is a major center affected heavily by COVID, and so, we have discussed whether we should move in a universal way to lower-intensity therapy for all patients. And we haven’t. And there’s pros and cons to that. When we do induction chemotherapy higher intensity, we, in fact, admit our patients for 28 days.

So, actually, even though it’s high intensity, the patient is more protected because they are in the room. Isolation rooms, sometimes. And they have minimum contact with outsiders. So, with COVID, actually, there’s very little opportunities or chances for them to get it. But the chemo is intensive. So, if they did get COVID, then it could be much more difficult or risky, or even fatal. On the other hand, low-intensity therapy is good because it’s low intensity and the risk of COVID, the frequency may or may not be changed; we don’t know. But the intensity we think could be lower because the immune system has not been suppressed.

However, low-intensity therapy very often is given outpatient. And so, then you have the benefit of lower intensity but the risk that you are going to be driving back and forth to the medical center, getting bloodwork, exposed to people in the waiting room, this and that. So, what we decided, after a lot of discussion among a big leukemia expert faculty in our group, was that we will still decide the optimum treatment based on the leukemia chromosome, molecular, age, fitness of the patient like we’ve always done.

And then we just have to try to encourage the patients to do as much precautions as possible. The other thing with the COVID, I think is very important is that, even though you may not be able to travel to your academic institution nearby because it’s harder to travel now, it’s still a good idea to try to get a consultation. We are doing a number of phone or email consultation, either directly with the patient, and even more frequently with their community doctor.

So, I get every day, four or five emails from academic even, and community physicians just saying, I have this patient, new AML, relapsed AML, whatever the case may be, here’s the mutation chromosome information, and I was going to do this. But the patient asked that I run this by one of my top academic colleagues. So, maybe MD Anderson. Some, I’m sure, are talking to Sloan. Some are, I know, are talking to Dana Farber. Cornell, whatever it may be. So, you can always request that. And maybe 100 percent of physicians may or may not do that.

And we’re seeing this collaboration actually. One of the positive things of COVID is we’re seeing these collaborations becoming better and better over time.

Katherine:                   

Oh, excellent. If a patient does need to go to clinic for a visit, what safety measures are in place?

Dr. Daver:                    

Yeah. So, there’s a few things we’re doing in clinic is; one is we have staggered our clinics. So, instead of having everybody come at 9:00 or 10:00 a.m., and having 30 people in the waiting room, we really have more time slots. And we ask people to come three of them at a time in the waiting room. We’re minimizing it three to five patients at most.

Of course, there’s a lot of sanitization, dispensation units everywhere, encouraged to use those. The other important thing which, unfortunately, is a double-edged sword, is that we have had to minimize the number of friends, relatives, spouses, that can come with patients.

In fact, the policy at MD Anderson, like most cancer centers, is that nobody is allowed with the patient unless the patient is physically really impaired, as in wheelchair-bound or cannot go to the restroom. Of course, there are exceptions. But generally, I know, and I actually benefit a lot from it too, when patients have their family because the emotional support also helps our medical team to get information across. The patient may be sometimes stressed and forget things. So, what we’re doing more and more is doing phone calls.

So, what I would recommend is, as soon as doctor comes in, say, hey, doctor, can I call my daughter or my wife? I want her to listen to everything. Perfect. I don’t mind. There’s a speaker on. Good.

So, that helps with communication. But those are the big changes we have done from the clinic perspective. Still seems to be working relatively smoothly. We’re still seeing almost about the same number of patients in clinic that we were before COVID. And we have, fortunately, and knock on wood, not seen big numbers of leukemia patients with COVID. And we think the primary reason is because leukemia patients are just very cautious from the beginning. Even before COVID, they knew the risks, and we want them to continue that as much as possible. 

Being Pro-Active in Your Care: Key AML Testing to Advocate For

Being Pro-Active in Your Care: Key AML Testing to Advocate For from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

AML specialist Dr. Naval Daver discusses essential testing for AML patients and suggests key questions that patients should ask their doctor during clinic visits. 

Dr. Naval Daver is an Associate Professor in the Department of Leukemia at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. More about Dr. Daver here.

See More From INSIST! AML

Related Resources:

How Do AML Targeted Treatments Work?

New AML Therapies vs Traditional Chemotherapy: What’s the Difference?

INSIST! AML Resource Guide

Transcript:

Katherine:                   

Well, let’s talk about patient advocacy. What are some of the key tests that patients should ask for after they’ve been diagnosed?

Dr. Daver:                    

The key things that patients should want to get the information is: 1) Knowing the bone marrow blasts.

I mean, that’s really basic. Just knowing what leukemia it is. What are the blast percentage? 2) Is, I think, chromosome analysis is very critical to get that information and to make sure we’re not missing acute promyelocytic leukemia, or core-binding factor leukemia, which have different treatments and very favorable outcomes, and would never, in general, never require a allogenic transplant. At least in majority of cases.

And 3), which is the one where we still see that it may sometimes not be available or be missed, is molecular testing.

I think it’s very critical to request molecular testing. And among molecular testing, especially FLT3, maybe IDH1 and IDH2, and TP53.

So, I think these are the most important data sets. Cytogenetics, key molecular mutations, bone marrow blasts, and confirmation of the type of leukemia before we embark on any treatment.

Katherine:                   

How can patients feel confident, do you think, in speaking up, and becoming a partner in their care?

Dr. Daver:                    

When you go for the clinic visits, just to have a list of your questions written down and having them prepared and prioritizing them. I always say, have your top-three questions ready.

We’ll try to do the others. But we’ll do the top three. And I think, when you have a new diagnosis of AML, the top three should be: what is the type of leukemia I have, and what are the bone marrow blasts? Number one. Do we have any chromosome and molecular information? Number two. And number three: Are there any specific treatments for my specific AML based on that chromosome molecular information? Or do we need additional information, and can we wait for that safely? I think these are the three very reasonable questions which, I think again, most leukemia experts will automatically be discussing this.

But, I think, for a patient, I think that’s important information to make sure they get before proceeding. If there’s time, the fourth question will be: Is – Are – Do we have a choice between high intensity, low intensity? And if we do, what are the pros and cons? In some cases, there may be a choice. In some cases, it may very clear that high intensity is the way to go, or low intensity is the way to go. But still, I think it’s often good to discuss that with your physician.

New AML Therapies vs Traditional Chemotherapy: What’s the Difference?

New AML Therapies vs Traditional Chemotherapy: What’s the Difference? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Does a newer therapy mean it’s more effective? Dr. Naval Daver, an AML specialist, discusses the differences between newer targeted therapies and chemotherapy, sharing key learnings from recent research. 

Dr. Naval Daver is an Associate Professor in the Department of Leukemia at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. More about Dr. Daver here.

Download Program Resource Guide

See More From INSIST! AML

Related Resources:

How Do AML Targeted Treatments Work?

Genetic Mutations That Affect AML Prognosis and Treatment

Confused About AML Genetic Testing and Treatment? What You Need to Know

Transcript:

Katherine:                   

How do these newer therapies differ from more traditional chemotherapy?

Dr. Daver:                    

Yeah. Dramatically different. Completely different from traditional chemotherapy. So, to put it in more layman terms, traditional chemotherapy is like a nuclear bomb. Right? You – There’s a lot of things there in the marrow. You don’t know what’s good. You don’t know what’s bad. Blow it all up and hope that, when the new plants grow, the good ones grow and the bad ones were kill. And, in fact, this is true, to a large extent. Traditional chemotherapy, not to put it down, is actually been curative in a large population of AML for the last three decades. Our group and British MRC and Polish, and many groups have published up to 50 to 65 percent cure rates, especially in younger patients, below 65, with traditional chemotherapy.

So, this is not bad. People always get depressed with leukemia. But if you look at solid tumors, I mean, they have never achieved cure rates above 10 to 15 percent till the last decade or so. So, we were still getting 60, 65 percent cure rate. Two out of three.

So, traditional chemotherapy has done great work. But it was that approach. Just nuclear explosion. Take it all out, and hope good stuff comes.

Now the targeted therapy’s like a sniper. It’s actually looking for the particular leukemia cells and trying to take them out one by one with minimum collateral damage to your healthy bone marrow cells, which are important to produce red cells, platelets, white cells. So, guess what? There’s much less toxicity. You don’t see the hair loss with these agents. You don’t see the mouth sores and mucositis. GI complications are much less; infection risk is usually less.

Not to say they don’t have their own side effects. Unfortunately, even the targeted therapies have unique side effects. But, in general, those side effects are much less impactful in a negative quality-of-life way and much more manageable and tolerable. So – And, in the end of the day, they’re actually often more effective.

So, for example, with the FLT3 inhibitor, the study that was done with Gilterinib and Quizartinib, two very potent FLT3 inhibitors, was looking at a single-agent FLT3 inhibitor versus three-drug, high-intensity combination nuclear chemotherapy.

And if I told this to any layperson, they would say, oh my God, that’s completely unfair comparison. You’re going to use three drugs, IV chemo, strong chemo, and compare it to one oral targeted pill. There’s no way the pill can be even equal, leave apart, win.

But guess what? The targeted therapy actually won. It not only was equal. It doubled the response rates, it reduced the toxicities and early mortality and led to improved overall survival, the gold standard. So, this shows that even though they are sniper, they can actually be much more effective with less toxicity. So, it’s a win-win. Better, tolerable, and more effective. Now the next stage within then decade, we think, it’s not one or the either, it’s really a combination. So, we’re reducing the dose of chemotherapy. So, we’re not making it as nuclear as it was. It’s still intense. But much more tolerable. And we’re compensating for that by adding the targeted therapy.

And, in fact, in the end, we expect much higher responses and survival with much better tolerability and lower early mortality. But I don’t think we’re at a stage where traditional chemotherapy is gone. Maybe 10, 12 years from now, as many more developments come, we’ll get there. But I think it still has a role, especially in the younger AML patients.

Katherine:                   

Dr. Daver, you mentioned the – some common side effects of chemotherapy. What about some of the newer therapies? Do they also have side effects?

Dr. Daver:                    

Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, every therapy we have in leukemia has a side effect. There’s no drug I can mention that is just devoid of them. Of course, some are less, and some are more. So, to be more specific, I think, for example, IDH1, IDH2 inhibitors, these are probably one of the most tolerable treatments we have in all of leukemia treatment. In general, they don’t cause much myelosuppression. Meaning, drop in blood counts. They don’t cause hair loss. They don’t cause mouth sores and GI upset in majority of people.

They’re always some patients who may. But what they can cause are two things: Number one, is they can cause what we call the differentiation syndrome.

And differentiation syndrome means the blasts that are going from the immature state to the mature state; in that process, they can cause an inflammatory reaction. And this can manifest with fever and cough, and chest pain, hypoxia. It’s something that’s actually very, very easily treatable, giving steroids for three or four days will take care of it. But many times, people were not aware of this. And so, often, we saw this was missed in the community.

So, that’s one specific example. With the FLT3 inhibitors, sometimes we see that they can cause more prolonged drop in blood counts, and count recovery can be delayed. Or we can sometimes see that they may cause some cardiac signals; increase in cardiac intervals. Again, something that, with close monitoring, bloodwork, keeping the electrolytes normal, can be managed. But I don’t want to go through the whole list. But the point is that there are specific and unique side effects that can be seen with particular targeted therapies.

And again, this is a learning curve where we have done these trials for eight to 10 years. So, we became familiar. But when the drug is approved, it’s a – it’s kind of a night-and-day situation in the community. They didn’t have the drug yesterday. They have it today. But there may not be any learning curve there. So, I think that’s where a lot of education and interaction with our colleagues is now coming into play.

But also, patients, I think, need to take this a little bit into their own hands, and also read about the label, read about the drug. So that, if they have side effects, if they actually ask their doctor and say, do you think this could be differentiation? I read about it. Yeah, most people will at least think about it. And I think this could be helpful to make sure that things are not missed. So, we do want patients to be more interactive and kind of  take things into their own hands. Because there are so many new drugs out there that their doctors may not be fully familiar yet.

Should AML Molecular Tests Be Repeated?

Should AML Molecular Tests Be Repeated? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Dr. Naval Daver, an AML specialist, reviews genetic testing, how the results affect AML treatment decisions, and when retesting may be appropriate for patients. 

Dr. Naval Daver is an Associate Professor in the Department of Leukemia at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. More about Dr. Daver here.

Download Program Resource Guide

See More From INSIST! AML

Related Resources:

 

Genetic Mutations That Affect AML Prognosis and Treatment

How is Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) Treated?

How Do AML Targeted Treatments Work?

Transcript:

Katherine:                   

What is genetic testing in AML?

Dr. Daver:                    

So, genetic testing in AML is basically what we call molecular profiling. 

So, it’s looking at the presence of particular molecular mutations. For example, at MD Anderson, we do what we call 81 gene panel. So, this looks at 81 different genes for mutations in the bone marrow of newly diagnosed acute myeloid leukemia. Now, how did we come up with 81 genes? So, this was actually done by literature analysis and review of previously published preclinical and translational studies, and we basically selected all mutations that had been shown to occur in two percent or more of thousands of AML patients. And we found 81 such mutations. So, that any mutation that had a two percent or higher frequency in known published or public databases was included.

And that’s how we’re able to analyze for the mutation.

So, it’s still possible that there may be some very rare mutations that are present, and those may be important for research. But they don’t change our treatment decision today. And so that’s what we call genetic profiling. Some people call it molecular mutation analysis. Some people call it next-generation sequencing.

But basically, this is looking for mutations in particular genes that are known to occur in AML. Now of those 81 genes; and some people do a 100 gene panel, some do 50, so those are variables; but among those, there are four or five that are most important: the FLT3, as we discussed, where we can use FLT3 inhibitors; IDH1 and two, because we can use IDH1 and IDH2 inhibitors; TP53 is a very important mutation because it has very high risk and adverse prognosis.

And there are now new drugs coming that may be very effective in TP53. So, we are checking for that. Those drugs are in trials, but the trials are showing very promising data and could be a great option if a patient is known to have a TP53.

Those drugs are Magrolimab, CD47 antibody, and APR-246. So, these are the four most important therapeutic mutations.

There are also some mutations that have prognostic value even though we cannot target them. These include mutations like RUNX1, DNMP3A, ASXL1.

One does not need to know the list. But the point is that these mutations may help determine whether a patient falls into intermediate-risk group or high-risk group, which then impacts the decision as to whether we need a stem cell transplant or not. So, it really is important to get this molecular profiling. It’s actually available in the United States commercially. And any clinic or hospital is able to actually order it. And insurance will cover it in 100 percent of the cases.

Katherine:                   

When should patients be tested, and how is testing done?

Dr. Daver:                   

Yeah. So, the basic testing for any suspected new acute leukemia is to get a bone marrow biopsy. That has to be done. That should be done very quickly because all of the information that will be generated to make the treatment decision will come off the bone marrow biopsy.

Katherine:                   

What about retesting, Dr. Daver? Is that necessary?

Dr. Daver:                    

Yeah. So, retesting is necessary in – not for everything, I think.

But let’s say someone had treatment induction and relapsed a year later. So, we would definitely retest: 1) to confirm with the bone marrow’s relapsed AML, get the blast percentage because we need that before restarting treatment, so we know what was the starting point to know how the patients doing after treatment if he’s responding. 2) Molecular testing, for sure, should be repeated. We usually repeat the molecular testing such as FLT3, IDH1, IDH2, because there are drugs that can target these mutations in a relapse.

And more interestingly, we actually have published, and other groups have also published, that there are some patients who may not have those mutations at baseline but may actually acquire or have detectible mutations at relapse. So, if you don’t have FLT3 at baseline, your physician may assume that the FLT3 is not there, not do mutational testing. But in fact, that may not be true. So, it is important to retest about 15 percent, one five percent, in our publications can acquire a detectible FLT3. Which is critical because this could then change your treatment.

IDH1 and two are rarely lost or acquired, but we have seen a few five percent or so cases of that. So, it’s still better to check for that. And then TP53 we check for because now we have these new research clinical trials, phase one, two, that are showing some very encouraging activity in TP53. So, these are probably the main things to retest for.

There’s also some new clinical data emerging with a new drug called menin inhibitor that targets a particular chromosome abnormality, MLL rearrangement.

This is again in a phase one setting, so the data may not be widely disseminated. But we’re seeing some very encouraging activity with menin inhibitors. 

And so, we are 100 percent checking for the MLL rearrangement chromosome, which can be done on FISH, or routine chromosome.

And if that is there then trying to get on one of the menin inhibitor trials, they’re opening about 25, 30 centers with different menin inhibitors, would be a very, very good option because we think these will be the next molecular or chromosome-targeted breakthrough in AML.

What Could AML Treatment Advances Mean for You?

What Could AML Treatment Advances Mean for You? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

AML specialist Dr. Naval Daver provides an overview of the progress in the field of research, including a discussion of inhibitor therapies that have revolutionized AML therapy. 

Dr. Naval Daver is an Associate Professor in the Department of Leukemia at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. More about Dr. Daver here.

Download Program Resource Guide

See More From INSIST! AML

Related Resources:

Genetic Mutations That Affect AML Prognosis and Treatment

Effective AML Combination Treatment: Pairing Old and New Therapies

Confused About AML Genetic Testing and Treatment? What You Need to Know

Transcript:

Katherine:                   

Dr. Daver, I know the field of AML research is advancing rapidly. Would you give us an overview of the current treatment types in AML?

Dr. Daver:                    

There has been dramatic progress in the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia, especially in the last three years. We’ve had eight new drugs approved for the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia. The most progress I think that has happened so far is in the identification of particular molecular mutations and targeting those mutations with targeted therapies.

The mutations that are most important right now and have target options for FLT3 mutations, F-L-T-3, and the drugs that have been USDA-approved for this are an agent called Midostaurin, which is a first-generation FLT3 inhibitor and combination chemotherapy.

And then, more recently, another agent called Gilteritinib, as a single agent in relapse refractory FLT3 AML. The other mutational group that is also very important, and therapeutically needs to be checked, is IDH1 and IDH2. And there are now two IDH inhibitors, IDH1 inhibitor, Ivosidenib, and IDH2 inhibitor, Enasidenib, both of which have been approved by the United States FDA for relapse patients with IDH1, IDH2 mutations. So, I think it’s really critical now to check for particular molecular mutations and to appropriately add the particular targeted therapy or select the particular targeted therapy in patients who have the mutation.

The other major area of advancement, and probably, if not the most important breakthrough that has happened, is the development of a new drug called Venetoclax. This is a BCL2 inhibitor. It’s new in AML, but in fact, it has been used for many years in CLL, which is chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

And this drug, in combination with Azacitidine in the frontline setting in older patients with AML who are not good candidates for intensive induction, has shown very high response rates, almost 70 percent CR-CRi, which is more than double of the 20 to 25 percent we were getting with Azacitidine alone.

And it’s now been approved by the US FDA and, in my opinion, and many of the experts really is the new standard of care and should be used in all older patients who are not good candidates for intensive chemotherapy given both the very high response rates, as well as now mature data showing significantly improved overall survival and a good tolerability.

So, there are many other breakthroughs. But I think these targeted agents, and Venetoclax, probably are the most impactful today. And we’re focusing a number of new combinations building around this. 

Key Testing for Personalized AML Care Resource Guide

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Treatment Approaches in AML: Key Testing for Personalized Care

Treatment Approaches in AML: Key Testing for Personalized Care from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

When it comes to Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML), genetic testing (or biomarker testing) is essential in helping to determine the best treatment approach for YOU. In this program, AML expert, Dr. Naval Daver reviews key decision-making factors, current AML treatments and emerging research for patients with AML.

Dr. Naval Daver is an Associate Professor in the Department of Leukemia at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. More about Dr. Daver here.

Download Program Resource Guide

See More From INSIST! AML

Related Resources:

 

How is Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) Treated?

 

Effective AML Combination Treatment: Pairing Old and New Therapies

 

Confused About AML Genetic Testing and Treatment? What You Need to Know

Transcript:

Katherine:                   

Welcome to INSIST! AML. A program focused on empowering patients to insist on better care. Today we’ll discuss the latest advances in AML, including the role of genetic testing and how this may affect treatment options. I’m Katherine Banwell, your host for today’s program. And joining me is Dr. Naval Daver. Welcome, Dr. Daver. Thank you so much for being here. Would you introduce yourself?

Dr. Daver:                    

Hello. Yeah. Thank you very much, Katherine. It’s a pleasure to join this discussion and meeting. I’m the Associate Professor in the Department of Leukemia at the MD Anderson Cancer Center. I focus on the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia and MDS, including the development of a number of clinical trials that are using targeted therapies and immune therapies for this disease. And with the great and dramatic progress, we’re seeing in acute myeloid leukemia; I think it is now more important than ever for patients to be aware of the options and be able to select the most appropriate therapy with their physicians.

Katherine:                   

Before we get into the discussion about AML, a reminder that this program is not a substitute for seeking medical advice. Please refer to your own healthcare team. Dr. Daver, I know the field of AML research is advancing rapidly. Would you give us an overview of the current treatment types in AML?

Dr. Daver:                    

There has been dramatic progress in the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia, especially in the last three years. We’ve had eight new drugs approved for the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia. The most progress I think that has happened so far is in the identification of particular molecular mutations and targeting those mutations with targeted therapies.

The mutations that are most important right now and have target options for FLT3 mutations, F-L-T-3, and the drugs that have been USDA-approved for this are an agent called Midostaurin, which is a first-generation FLT3 inhibitor and combination chemotherapy.

And then, more recently, another agent called Gilteritinib, as a single agent in relapse refractory FLT3 AML. The other mutational group that is also very important, and therapeutically needs to be checked, is IDHN1 and IDH2. And there are now two IDH inhibitors, IDH1 inhibitor, Ivosidenib, and IDH2 inhibitor, Enasidenib, both of which have been approved by the United States FDA for relapse patients with IDH1, IDH2 mutations. So, I think it’s really critical now to check for particular molecular mutations and to appropriately add the particular targeted therapy or select the particular targeted therapy in patients who have the mutation.

The other major area of advancement, and probably, if not the most important breakthrough that has happened, is the development of a new drug called Venetoclax. This is a BCL2 inhibitor. It’s new in AML, but in fact, it has been used for many years in CLL, which is chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

And this drug, in combination with Azacitidine in the frontline setting in older patients with AML who are not good candidates for intensive induction, has shown very high response rates, almost 70 percent CR-CRi, which is more than double of the 20 to 25 percent we were getting with Azacitidine alone.

And it’s now been approved by the US FDA and, in my opinion, and many of the experts really is the new standard of care and should be used in all older patients who are not good candidates for intensive chemotherapy given both the very high response rates, as well as now mature data showing significantly improved overall survival and a good tolerability.

So, there are many other breakthroughs. But I think these targeted agents, and Venetoclax, probably are the most impactful today.

And we’re focusing a number of new combinations building around this.  

Katherine:                   

What are common mutations in AML?

Dr. Daver:                    

Yeah. So, the most common mutation in AML is F-L-T-3, FLT3 mutation. This is both prognostically important mutation, presence of an FLT3 in a newly diagnosed AML, has been shown in many large publications by the German Cooperative Group, British Cooperative Group, our group, and others, is associated with an inferior survival.

Also, now, on top of that, it is also a therapeutically important mutation in addition to having negative prognostic value because the addition of FLT3 inhibitors seems to dilute, to a large extent, the negative prognostic value.

So, we believe that if we can identify FLT3 mutations at FLT3 inhibitors, we can definitely improve the outcome of those patients. The second most common is what we call NPM1 mutation, and that tends to occur with FLT3. About 55 percent of patients with an FLT3 mutation will have a coopering NPM1.

NPM1 is very interesting. With NPM1 mutation is present on it’s own without a FLT3, it’s actually associated with favorable outcome. It’s a favorable prognostic marker. However, if NPM1 is present with a FLT3, and especially if the FLT3 has a high quantity, high allelic load, then the NPM1 loses its favorable impact. So, now we’re kind of moving beyond just; do you have one mutation or not, which is what we thought 10 years ago, to; well, yes, you have this mutation, but what about the core-occurring mutation and even beyond. What about the burden, or what we call the variant allele frequency of that mutation?

So, for good or bad and I think it’s good in the end because it’s going to improve the patient outcomes, that we are getting more, more in-depth and there’s no longer quote, unquote, AML.

So, there’s a lot more granularity and analysis that is required even before starting treatment. And this is the thing that, in the community, we’re educating the doctors a lot, is that it’s okay to wait four to six days, especially if the patient does not have a very proliferative leukemia, to get the important bloodwork to identify the appropriate molecular and chromosome group.

So, that we can select the right treatment which will improve outcome rather than just rushing into standard treatment and missing a particular molecular chromosome group.

Katherine:                   

True. It might not be – the genetic testing might not be right for everyone.

Dr. Daver:                    

Right. Right.

Katherine:                   

What is genetic testing in AML?

Dr. Daver:                    

So, genetic testing in AML is basically what we call molecular profiling.

So, it’s looking at the presence of particular molecular mutations. For example, at MD Anderson, we do what we call 81 gene panel. So, this looks at 81 different genes for mutations in the bone marrow of newly diagnosed acute myeloid leukemia. Now, how did we come up with 81 genes? So, this was actually done by literature analysis and review of previously published preclinical and translational studies, and we basically selected all mutations that had been shown to occur in two percent or more of thousands of AML patients. And we found 81 such mutations. So, that any mutation that had a two percent or higher frequency in known published or public databases was included.

And that’s how we’re able to analyze for the mutation. So, it’s still possible that there may be some very rare mutations that are present, and those may be important for research. But they don’t change our treatment decision today. And so that’s what we call genetic profiling. Some people call it molecular mutation analysis. Some people call it next-generation sequencing.

But basically, this is looking for mutations in particular genes that are known to occur in AML. Now of those 81 genes; and some people do a 100 gene panel, some do 50, so those are variables; but among those, there are four or five that are most important: the FLT3, as we discussed, where we can use FLT3 inhibitors; IDH1 and two, because we can use IDH1 and IDH2 inhibitors; TP53 is a very important mutation because it has very high risk and adverse prognosis.

And there are now new drugs coming that may be very effective in TP53. So, we are checking for that. Those drugs are in trials, but the trials are showing very promising data and could be a great option if a patient is known to have a TP53.

Those drugs are Magrolimab, CD47 antibody, and APR-246. So, these are the four most important therapeutic mutations.

There are also some mutations that have prognostic value even though we cannot target them. These include mutations like RUNX1, DNMP3A, ASXL1.

One does not need to know the list. But the point is that these mutations may help determine whether a patient falls into intermediate-risk group or high-risk group, which then impacts the decision as to whether we need a stem cell transplant or not. So, it really is important to get this molecular profiling. It’s actually available in the United States commercially. And any clinic or hospital is able to actually order it. And insurance will cover it in 100 percent of the cases.

Katherine:                   

Wow, that’s great. What should – when should patients be tested, and how is testing done?

Dr. Daver:                   

Yeah. So, the basic testing for any suspected new acute leukemia is to get a bone marrow biopsy. That has to be done.

That should be done very quickly because all of the information that will be generated to make the treatment decision will come off the bone marrow biopsy.

Katherine:

What about retesting, Dr. Daver? Is that necessary?

Dr. Daver:                    

Yeah. So, retesting is necessary in – not for everything, I think.

But let’s say someone had treatment induction and relapsed a year later. So, we would definitely retest: 1) to confirm with the bone marrow’s relapsed AML, get the blast percentage because we need that before restarting treatment, so we know what was the starting point to know how the patients doing after treatment if he’s responding. 2) Molecular testing, for sure, should be repeated. We usually repeat the molecular testing such as FLT3, IDH1, IDH2, because there are drugs that can target these mutations in a relapse.

And more interestingly, we actually have published, and other groups have also published, that there are some patients who may not have those mutations at baseline but may actually acquire or have detectible mutations at relapse. So, if you don’t have FLT3 at baseline, your physician may assume that the FLT3 is not there, not do mutational testing. But in fact, that may not be true. So, it is important to retest about 15 percent, one five percent, in our publications can acquire a detectible FLT3. Which is critical because this could then change your treatment.

IDH1 and two are rarely lost or acquired, but we have seen a few five percent or so cases of that. So, it’s still better to check for that. And then TP53 we check for because now we have these new research clinical trials, phase one, two, that are showing some very encouraging activity in TP53. So, these are probably the main things to retest for.

There’s also some new clinical data emerging with a new drug called menin inhibitor that targets a particular chromosome abnormality, MLL rearrangement. This is again in a phase one setting, so the data may not be widely disseminated. But we’re seeing some very encouraging activity with menin inhibitors.  

And so, we are 100 percent checking for the MLL rearrangement chromosome, which can be done on FISH, or routine chromosome.

And if that is there then trying to get on one of the menin inhibitor trials, they’re opening about 25, 30 centers with different menin inhibitors, would be a very, very good option because we think these will be the next molecular or chromosome-targeted breakthrough in AML.

Katherine:                   

We’ve been discussing how molecular testing results lead to targeted therapy. How do targeted therapies work?

Dr. Daver:   

Targeted therapy means that we’re targeting a particular mutation. Now we may be targeting in different ways. So, some of the drugs, like FLT3 inhibitors, these are the most established and oldest targeted therapies in acute myeloid leukemia, been in development for about 18 to 20 years, work by blocking a particular receptor, the FLT3 receptor.

That receptor, when blocked, removes the growth and proliferation signal to the leukemia blast. And that receptor is much more preferentially and heavily expressed on the surface of the acute myeloid leukemia cell as compared to the normal, healthy myeloid or lymphoid cell. So, basically, we are shutting down the growth signals, resulting in eventual death of the leukemia blast and that’s how FLT3 inhibitors work. So, it’s a more of a direct activity resulting in cell death over a few days and quick action. On the other hand, we have what also is called targeted therapies but act very differently. These are IDH1, IDH2 inhibitors.

So, when you use an IDH1 or two inhibitor, they do go to the IDH1 and two receptor on the surface of the acute myeloid leukemia cell, but actually, they don’t result in the death of the cell. They actually cause what we call differentiation.

So, they promote that immature abnormal leukemia cell to undergo maturation and become a normal myeloid cell, which, over time, will die because normal cells have a finite lifespan, and they will die. As compared to leukemia blasts, which can live on much, much, much longer. And so, this process is called differentiation. So, FLT3 inhibitor, very different direct cell death. IDH inhibitor, very different from most maturation differentiation of immature cells to mature cells and takes longer. So, this is important clinically because with FLT3 inhibitors. We see responses quickly, one to two months. IDH inhibitors it takes longer, three to five months.

And so, targeted therapy is not one and all the same. You may be targeting a particular receptor, but the modality of action downstream may be very different.

Katherine:                   

What’s the treatment regimen for targeted therapies, and how long are patients treated with these types of therapies?

Dr. Daver:   

Yeah. I mean, that’s an area of big research. There’s no one field of answer yet for – and I don’t think there will be.

Of course, eventually. So, it really depends on; 1) What setting we’re using it in? Newly diagnosed, relapsed AML. In relapsed AML, with most targeted therapies, whether you’re use is a single agent, like FLT3, IDH1, IDH2, TP53, MLL-targeted agents, the goal is to get a patient to transplant.

Transplant, meaning allogeneic stem cell transplant using a sibling donor or a match-generated donor.

Because in relapsed AML without transplant, irrespective of the genetics and chromosomes, all relapsed AML have very poor outcome. The survival is only 20 percent or less without transplant.

If we can get a patient to transplant, we do have a good chance of long-term survival. So, the goal is transplant. And we usually use a targeted therapy for short, finite period, two to four months, to get a remission, get to transplant, hope that will cure the disease.

In front line, it’s quite different. We’re using induction chemotherapy with FLT3 inhibitors. In some research trials, we’re adding IDH1 and two inhibitors. We’re using Venetoclax, which is a kind of a targeted therapy.

Also, the BCL2 in combination with hypomethylating agents. And here, the targeted therapy is often used indefinitely. At least for one or two years. But in our approach and our guidelines, we continue the FLT3 inhibitor, IDH1 or two inhibitor or Venetoclax, as long as patient is tolerating it and does not have disease progression.

So, these are being used kind of similar to CML, chronic myeloid leukemia, where we use tyrosine kinase inhibitors or myelofibrosis, where you use jak inhibitors. They don’t cure the disease, but they continue to control the disease as long as you take them.

And in the end, we call this functional cure.

If somebody takes a FLT3 inhibitor and lives 20-plus years, semantically, he was never a cure, like an infection gets cured. But functionally, to me, he lived a normal life, and he was cured.

Dr. Daver:                    

And so, that’s how we’re using those inhibitors in the frontline setting different from the relapse setting.

Katherine:                   

How do these newer therapies differ from more traditional chemotherapy?

Dr. Daver:   

Yeah. Dramatically different. Completely different from traditional chemotherapy. So, to put it in more layman terms, traditional chemotherapy is like a nuclear bomb. Right? You – There’s a lot of things there in the marrow. You don’t know what’s good. You don’t know what’s bad. Blow it all up and hope that, when the new plants grow, the good ones grow and the bad ones were kill. And, in fact, this is true, to a large extent. Traditional chemotherapy, not to put it down, is actually been curative in a large population of AML for the last three decades. Our group and British MRC and Polish, and many groups have published up to 50 to 65 percent cure rates, especially in younger patients, below 65, with traditional chemotherapy.

So, this is not bad. People always get depressed with leukemia. But if you look at solid tumors, I mean, they have never achieved cure rates above 10 to 15 percent till the last decade or so. So, we were still getting 60, 65 percent cure rate. Two out of three.

So, traditional chemotherapy has done great work. But it was that approach. Just nuclear explosion. Take it all out, and hope good stuff comes.

Now the targeted therapy’s like a sniper. It’s actually looking for the particular leukemia cells and trying to take them out one by one with minimum collateral damage to your healthy bone marrow cells, which are important to produce red cells, platelets, white cells. So, guess what? There’s much less toxicity. You don’t see the hair loss with these agents. You don’t see the mouth sores and mucositis. GI complications are much less; infection risk is usually less.

Not to say they don’t have their own side effects. Unfortunately, even the targeted therapies have unique side effects. But, in general, those side effects are much less impactful in a negative quality-of-life way and much more manageable and tolerable. So – And, in the end of the day, they’re actually often more effective.

So, for example, with the FLT3 inhibitor, the study that was done with Gilterinib and Quizartinib, two very potent FLT3 inhibitors, was looking at a single-agent FLT3 inhibitor versus three-drug, high-intensity combination nuclear chemotherapy. And if I told this to any layperson, they would say, oh my God, that’s completely unfair comparison. You’re going to use three drugs, IV chemo, strong chemo, and compare it to one oral targeted pill. There’s no way the pill can be even equal, leave apart, win.

But guess what? The targeted therapy actually won. It not only was equal. It doubled the response rates, it reduced the toxicities and early mortality and led to improved overall survival, the gold standard. So, this shows that even though they are sniper, they can actually be much more effective with less toxicity. So, it’s a win-win. Better, tolerable, and more effective. Now the next stage within then decade, we think, it’s not one or the either, it’s really a combination. So, we’re reducing the dose of chemotherapy. So, we’re not making it as nuclear as it was. It’s still intense. But much more tolerable. And we’re compensating for that by adding the targeted therapy.

And, in fact, in the end, we expect much higher responses and survival with much better tolerability and lower early mortality. But I don’t think we’re at a stage where traditional chemotherapy is gone. Maybe 10, 12 years from now, as many more developments come, we’ll get there. But I think it still has a role, especially in the younger AML patients.

Katherine:                   

Dr. Daver, you mentioned the – some common side effects of chemotherapy. What about some of the newer therapies? Do they also have side effects?

Dr. Daver:                    

Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, every therapy we have in leukemia has a side effect. There’s no drug I can mention that is just devoid of them. Of course, some are less, and some are more. So, to be more specific, I think, for example, IDH1, IDH2 inhibitors, these are probably one of the most tolerable treatments we have in all of leukemia treatment. In general, they don’t cause much myelosuppression. Meaning, drop in blood counts. They don’t cause hair loss. They don’t cause mouth sores and GI upset in majority of people.

They’re always some patients who may. But what they can cause are two things: Number one, is they can cause what we call the differentiation syndrome.

And differentiation syndrome means the blasts that are going from the immature state to the mature state; in that process, they can cause an inflammatory reaction. And this can manifest with fever and cough, and chest pain, hypoxia. It’s something that’s actually very, very easily treatable, giving steroids for three or four days will take care of it. But many times, people were not aware of this. And so, often, we saw this was missed in the community.

So, that’s one specific example. With the FLT3 inhibitors, sometimes we see that they can cause more prolonged drop in blood counts, and count recovery can be delayed. Or we can sometimes see that they may cause some cardiac signals; increase in cardiac intervals. Again, something that, with close monitoring, bloodwork, keeping the electrolytes normal, can be managed. But I don’t want to go through the whole list. But the point is that there are specific and unique side effects that can be seen with particular targeted therapies.

And again, this is a learning curve where we have done these trials for eight to 10 years. So, we became familiar. But when the drug is approved, it’s a – it’s kind of a night-and-day situation in the community. They didn’t have the drug yesterday. They have it today. But there may not be any learning curve there. So, I think that’s where a lot of education and interaction with our colleagues is now coming into play.

But also, patients, I think, need to take this a little bit into their own hands, and also read about the label, read about the drug. So that, if they have side effects, if they actually ask their doctor and say, do you think this could be differentiation? I read about it. Yeah, most people will at least think about it. And I think this could be helpful to make sure that things are not missed. So, we do want patients to be more interactive and kind of  take things into their own hand. Because there are so many new drugs out there that their doctors may not be fully familiar yet.

Katherine:                   

Well, let’s talk about patient advocacy. What are some of the key tests that patients should ask for after they’ve been diagnosed?

Dr. Daver:                    

Yeah. Absolutely. So, I think the key things that patients should want to get the information is: 1) Knowing the bone marrow blasts.

I mean, that’s really basic. Just knowing what leukemia it is. What are the blast percentage? 2) Is, I think, chromosome analysis is very critical to get that information and to make sure we’re not missing acute promyelocytic leukemia, or core-binding factor leukemia, which have different treatments and very favorable outcomes, and would never, in general, never require a allogenic transplant. At least in majority of cases.

And 3), which is the one where we still see that it may sometimes not be available or be missed, is molecular testing.

I think it’s very critical to request molecular testing. And among molecular testing, especially FLT3, maybe IDH1 and IDH2, and TP53.

So, I think these are the most important data sets. Cytogenetics, key molecular mutations, bone marrow blasts, and confirmation of the type of leukemia before we embark on any treatment.

Katherine:                   

How can patients feel confident, do you think, in speaking up, and becoming a partner in their care?

Dr. Daver:   

Yeah. I mean, this is always a touchy area because physicians may feel that this is kind of encroaching on their territory or telling them what to do. And this is always a major challenge. I think when you go for the clinic visits, just to have a list of your questions written down and having them prepared and prioritizing them.

I always say, have your top-three questions ready.

We’ll try to do the others. But we’ll do the top three. And I think, when you have a new diagnosis of AML, the top three should be: what is the type of leukemia I have, and what are the bone marrow blasts? Number one. Do we have any chromosome and molecular information? Number two. And number three: Are there any specific treatments for my specific AML based on that chromosome molecular information? Or do we need additional information, and can we wait for that safely? I think these are the three very reasonable questions which, I think again, most leukemia experts will automatically be discussing this.

But, I think, for a patient, I think that’s important information to make sure they get before proceeding. If there’s time, the fourth question will be: Is – Are – Do we have a choice between high intensity, low intensity? And if we do, what are the pros and cons? In some cases, there may be a choice. In some cases, it may very clear that high intensity is the way to go, or low intensity is the way to go. But still, I think it’s often good to discuss that with your physician.

So, these are probably the four things one can bring up reasonably without the physician feeling that this is going to take forever, and I cannot discuss this. And then a lot of the AML treatment happens in-patient. So, there will be a lot of time for additional discussion. I tell my patients that, look, once we get the basics and the treatment decided, which is what we do in clinic, then you’ll be in the hospital most of the time. If it’s induction chemo for four weeks. Even if it’s Venetoclax, often they’re admitted for five to seven days, they will have more time then to discuss with the physician, the nurses, on a daily basis, and get more of the nitty-gritty.

Things like diet, exercise, lifestyle. Can I meet friends? I think you should not try to bring those things up right in the first visit. Because that may dilute the key information. So, I think staggering it, keeping in mind that many physicians are extremely busy, and getting that information in pieces over time, is probably productive for you and for the doctor.

Katherine:                   

With Covid-19 affecting all our lives right now, what should AML patients be considering at this time?

Dr. Daver:   

There’s a lot of guidelines on general approaches to managing things in COVID. And all of those guidelines heavily center, as we would think intuitively, on precautions.

Hand washing, minimizing contact, avoiding crowded places, trying to get treatment, potentially locally, if there are equivalent options available. We have not changed any of our frontline – we discuss this a lot every week in our faculty meeting.

This is discussed especially, as you know, because Houston currently is a major center affected heavily by COVID, and so, we have discussed whether we should move in a universal way to lower-intensity therapy for all patients. And we haven’t. And there’s pros and cons to that. When we do induction chemotherapy higher intensity, we, in fact, admit our patients for 28 days.

o, actually, even though it’s high intensity, the patient is more protected because they are in the room. Isolation rooms, sometimes. And they have minimum contact with outsiders. So, with COVID, actually, there’s very little opportunities or chances for them to get it. But the chemo is intensive. So, if they did get COVID, then it could be much more difficult or risky, or even fatal. On the other hand, low-intensity therapy is good because it’s low intensity and the risk of COVID, the frequency may or may not be changed; we don’t know. But the intensity we think could be lower because the immune system has not been suppressed.

However, low-intensity therapy very often is given outpatient. And so, then you have the benefit of lower intensity but the risk that you are going to be driving back and forth to the medical center, getting bloodwork, exposed to people in the waiting room, this and that. So, what we decided, after a lot of discussion among a big leukemia expert faculty in our group, was that we will still decide the optimum treatment based on the leukemia chromosome, molecular, age, fitness of the patient like we’ve always done.

And then we just have to try to encourage the patients to do as much precautions as possible. The other thing with the COVID, I think is very important is that, even though you may not be able to travel to your academic institution nearby because it’s harder to travel now, it’s still a good idea to try to get a consultation. We are doing a number of phone or email consultation, either directly with the patient, and even more frequently with their community doctor.

So, I get every day, four or five emails from academic even, and community physicians just saying, I have this patient, new AML, relapsed AML, whatever the case may be, here’s the mutation chromosome information, and I was going to do this. But the patient asked that I run this by one of my top academic colleagues. So, maybe MD Anderson. Some, I’m sure, are talking to Sloan. Some are, I know, are talking to Dana Farber. Cornell, whatever it may be. So, you can always request that. And maybe 100 percent of physicians may or may not do that.

And we’re seeing this collaboration actually. One of the positive things of COVID is we’re seeing these collaborations becoming better and better over time.

Katherine:                   

Oh, excellent. If a patient does need to go to clinic for a visit, what safety measures are in place?

Dr. Daver:   

Yeah. So, there’s a few things we’re doing in clinic is; one is we have staggered our clinics. So, instead of having everybody come at 9:00 or 10:00 a.m., and having 30 people in the waiting room, we really have more time slots.

And we ask people to come three of them at a time in the waiting room. We’re minimizing it three to five patients at most

Of course, there’s a lot of sanitization, dispensation units everywhere, encouraged to use those. The other important thing which, unfortunately, is a double-edged sword, is that we have had to minimize the number of friends, relatives, spouses, that can come with patients.

In fact, the policy at MD Anderson, like most cancer centers, is that nobody is allowed with the patient unless the patient is physically really impaired, as in wheelchair-bound or cannot go to the restroom. Of course, there are exceptions. But generally, I know, and I actually benefit a lot from it too, when patients have their family because the emotional support also helps our medical team to get information across. The patient may be sometimes stressed and forget things. So, what we’re doing more and more is doing phone calls.

So, what I would recommend is, as soon as doctor comes in, say, hey, doctor, can I call my daughter or my wife? I want her to listen to everything. Perfect. I don’t mind. There’s a speaker on. Good.

So, that helps with communication. But those are the big changes we have done from the clinic perspective. Still seems to be working relatively smoothly. We’re still seeing almost about the same number of patients in clinic that we were before COVID. And we have, fortunately, and knock on wood, not seen big numbers of leukemia patients with COVID. And we think the primary reason is because leukemia patients are just very cautious from the beginning. Even before COVID, they knew the risks, and we want them to continue that as much as possible.  

Katherine:

Dr. Daver, thank you so much for joining us today.

Dr. Daver:   

Thank you very much. Always a pleasure.

Katherine:

And thank you to all of our partners.

To learn more about AML and to access tools to help you become a more proactive patient, visit powerfulpatients.org. I’m Katherine Banwell – Thank you, Dr. Daver.

On Recovering After a Stem Cell Transplant

As a transplant survivor and peer volunteer, I have met with over 150 transplant patients. The most common question I hear concerns what recovery looks like. People want to know about timelines, precautions, complications, medications, benchmarks, and much more.

I can only answer these questions from my experience, and no two outcomes are the same. But I’ve read and heard enough other stories to know where mine is typical or exceptional, so I can also place my story in a broader context.

In June of 2016, I was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. I underwent induction chemotherapy and achieved a temporary remission. In October of 2016, I received a double cord blood stem cell transplant. I fully recovered and have returned to all my prior activities, so mine is a very positive story. Along the way, however, there were several memorable challenges.

Prelude to a transplant

My initial treatment required a five-and-a-half-week hospital stay. It was one week for the traditional “7+3” chemotherapy regimen, and another four and a half weeks to monitor and treat the inevitable infections that followed in the wake of chemotherapy-induced immunosuppression.

My diagnosis was routine for my providers but shocking for me. I was asymptomatic and feeling perfectly healthy at my annual physical. But low white blood cell counts triggered a bone marrow biopsy that established my diagnosis. I was hospitalized the next day and started chemotherapy the day after that. My treatment was underway before I even understood my disease and its bleak prognosis.

When they told me to expect a 5-6-week hospital stay, I was dumbfounded. I quickly realized that I needed ways to cope with how my world had suddenly become very small and quite precarious. Over the ensuing weeks, I developed and honed several crucial strategies.

First, I relied upon mindfulness, meditation, and yoga. It helped me banish thoughts about the past and anxieties about the future, and to non-judgmentally accept and live in each moment as it unfolded.

Second, I did as much physical exercise as my circumstances would allow. My routines included stretching, isometric exercises, extensive hall walking, squats, lunges and pushups. I did it mindfully, and these routines structured my days, increased my energy, and lifted my spirits.

Third, I was a pro-active patient. I cultivated good communication with my doctors and nurses. I asked lots of questions about my treatment and became a collaborator in decisions about medications, dosing, and deciphering and treating the many infections and side effects that came my way.

Fourth, I maintained my robust sense of humor. Sharing jokes and witty banter with my medical providers broke the ice, resolved the tension, and humanized our consults. It also gave friends and family a way to relate to me as the person I’d always been rather than the patient I’d recently become.

Fifth, I relied on a supportive belief system. For some, that’s religion. For me, it was a secular worldview based on my social science background. It encouraged me to learn about my condition and fostered a practical, problem-solving orientation to all the challenges it posed.

Finally, I wrote my story from the very first week. I sent detailed reports about my status and reflections as a cancer patient to a large group of email correspondents. Writing for others forced me to understand my journey so I could articulate it for them. This writing became a psychic survival mechanism (and a subsequent memoir).

When the time for transplant arrived, I packed a bag, grabbed my laptop, and took these coping strategies with me. As doctors cured my body, these strategies sustained me throughout everything that was to come.

The Transplant and Hospitalization

Like many patients, I was admitted to my transplant hospital one week before the actual procedure (day -7). I underwent conditioning chemotherapy and full body radiation. Upon my transplant (day 0), I was told to expect another three to five weeks in the hospital before I could be safely discharged.

Days 1-7 were uneventful except for some moderate nausea due my prior chemotherapy and radiation. I got some relief from a drug called marinol that allowed me to eat regular meals during this time. As my counts hit bottom, I was closely monitored for fevers and infections. Even so, I felt good enough to do daily exercise, walk on a treadmill, do yoga, and be as active as possible while confined to my room.

On day 8, my doctors said I was doing so well they were thinking of discharging me in a couple more days – much earlier than expected. But then I developed an infection and a recurring fever that spiked every twelve hours for several days and delayed my discharge.

By day 19, my infection and fevers had resolved, and I went home under the watchful eye of my caregivers. I thus left the hospital in just under three weeks since transplant – much quicker than the 3-5-week hospitalization I had been told to expect.

A Memorable Month at Home

From day 20 to 50, the plan was for daily clinic visits to monitor counts, treat symptoms, and assess progress. On day 21, a bone marrow biopsy revealed that one of my donors was 99% engrafted, which was an unusually early and complete success for a cord blood transplant. With engraftment underway, we then watched for signs of graft-vs.-host disease.

During this month (day 20-50), my caregivers were essential. They drove me to daily clinic visits for blood draws, provider consultations and needed treatments. From day 20-26, I received daily transfusions of platelets and several transfusions of red blood cells. Several more transfusions as well as injections of growth factor medications to spur new white blood cells followed throughout this month. After the second week, however, they reduced my clinic visits to fewer and fewer days each succeeding week.

That first month at home (day 20-50) was also when I felt the side-effects from my treatment most keenly. The lingering impacts of chemotherapy and radiation, the engraftment process, and multiple medications produced several memorable symptoms. There were aches and pains from the engraftment itself that I treated with ibuprofen, and ongoing bouts of nausea that I managed with marinol. I was also taking about 20 scheduled pills a day, including prophylactic antibiotics, anti-viral and anti-fungal medications, anti-rejection medications, and several pills to manage side effects of these medications.

My most memorable symptom during this period was a staggering level of fatigue as my body underwent this transformation. I was sleeping eight to nine hours a night but still required lengthy naps in the late morning and late afternoon. I couldn’t stay awake for more than four hours at a time and was totally exhausted by nightfall.

On day 39, routine blood work detected a cytomegalovirus infection. It’s one of many critters that can reside in our gut our whole lives unbeknownst to us. But with immunosuppression, the virus can become active and pose serious danger. It is usually well controlled if detected early and treated quickly, so I was immediately put on a more powerful antiviral drug to address the infection.

The virus drastically reduced my white blood cell count while the antiviral medication added further immunosuppressive effects. For a few days, I had additional fatigue, aches, chills, and nausea. When the virus and anti-viral forces fought to a standstill, they contemplated admitting me back into the hospital for several days of IV, antiviral treatments. Instead of re-hospitalization, however, the compromise treatment was an outpatient infusion of IV immunoglobulin to boost my white blood cell count while the antiviral medication gradually tamed the virus. With that, I continued my recovery at home.

Through the First 100 Days

From day 50 to day 100, I experienced gradual if uneven improvement. Clinic visits tapered to once a week or less. Bone aches ceased and nausea all but disappeared. Fatigue also decreased, and when I did feel tired, I could usually trace it to increased activity levels compared to my first 30 days at home. As I was able to reduce doses or eliminate some medications, my mind cleared and my energy increased. While I experienced minor rashes, dry eyes, and sinus headaches, there was nothing that required major medical treatment or raised suspicions of graft-vs.-host disease.

By day 58, I began experiencing neuropathy in my feet. This is a common side-effect of chemotherapy, but in my case, it has been blessedly mild. It mainly presents as numbness and tingling under the balls of both feet. I was told it might resolve within a year, but it remains the only side effect that has persisted and which I now regard as permanent. It has not responded to acupuncture or cortisone injections. My best adaptation has been specially designed shoes and custom insoles that take pressure off the sensitive areas and make the condition quite tolerable.

By day 60, I was having trouble lining up caregivers but still needed to get to weekly clinic visits. I had been prohibited from driving or being without a caregiver for the first 100 days, but that was no longer practical. I carefully began driving myself to clinic visits. By then, I knew how my medications affected me and so I delayed my antifungal medication and the blurry vision it caused until I safely returned from my outings.

On day 78, my oncologist recommended removing the “Power Hickman” central line that had served me well for almost seven months. It had been with me since the beginning of my treatment and had facilitated painless blood draws and countless infusions of blood, platelets, IV medications, and chemotherapy. But with the reduction in all these procedures, the risk of an infected line was becoming greater than the benefits of keeping it in place. An added benefit was being able to take a shower without wrapping my entire upper torso in Saran Wrap to protect the gizmo.

Day 100 was a significant benchmark for several reasons. I had another bone marrow biopsy that confirmed full engraftment and no residual leukemia. Reviewing my biopsy results, blood tests, and overall progress, my oncologist said my recovery to date was “as good as it gets.”

At this time, I was able to eliminate or reduce many of my medications. More importantly, I began to gradually taper my anti-rejection medication (cyclosporine) over the next three-month period. The gradual pace of this taper was meant to allow my old body and my new immune system to learn to get along with each other, restore full immunity, and avoid GVHD

By this time, I was feeling much better and was eager to return to my regular activities. Since my blood counts were all good, I asked my oncologist her advice. She provided a rather technical explanation of why I was still at considerable risk and needed to avoid crowds, continue wearing my mask in public, and follow other precautions.

My layman’s interpretation of her explanation was that even though I had sufficient white blood cells and neutrophils, my anti-rejection medication would still prevent them from fully activating in case of infection. So despite feeling better and having good counts, I needed to maintain precautions until my anti-rejection medication had run its course and my immune system was more functional and able to protect me in a germ-filled world.

Completing the Marathon

From day 100 to day 180, I continued gradual improvement and weathered some minor bumps in the road. My clinic visits were now spaced out every couple weeks, and I began to see other practitioners to assess some peripheral issues arising from my diagnosis and treatment.

Since my leukemia put me at risk for skin cancer, I saw a dermatologist who detected a small, basal cell carcinoma that was easily excised. I continue to see her every six months for full body skin checks with no further issues. My leukemia had also caused some retinal hemorrhaging that was diagnosed before transplant. A follow up visit during this period showed that all retinal issues had completely resolved with the eradication of my leukemia.

Even though I was now tapering my anti-rejection medication, its cumulative impact produced numerous unpleasant side effects. While I avoided the most serious ones, I nonetheless experienced flushing, hypertension, nausea, altered kidney function, neuropathy, weight loss, leg cramps, sinus irritation, abdominal swelling, and night sweats. I began a temporary regimen of blood pressure medication and rode out the other issues. To top it off, I also had a flare up of the cytomegalovirus, which once again was quickly detected and effectively treated with specialized antiviral medication.

On day 180, I had my 6-month biopsy which reconfirmed full engraftment and no residual leukemia. At this time, I stopped my anti-rejection medication and its unwanted side effects began to dissipate. I was also able to stop virtually all of my remaining pills with the exception of an antiviral medication which continued until day 365. With adequate immunity restored, I was cleared to do any activity I wanted with one exception: I had to avoid fungal sources of infection (yard work, turning over soil, fresh mushrooms, etc.) for the next six months because such infections are easy to contract and difficult to eradicate.

For me, this was a major psychological turning point. I accepted that I was actually better, resumed my “normal” life, and let go of lingering anxieties about my status. When my transplant oncologist said she didn’t need to see me for another six months, it was initially unnerving after such intensive monitoring. At the same time, it reinforced my sense that I had reached a major milestone in my recovery.

“As Good As It Gets” (and Some Cheap Advice)

After day 180, my care shifted back to my initial oncologist at my induction hospital. Monthly blood draws and bimonthly consultations gradually became less frequent. Four years out from my initial diagnosis, I now have blood draws four times a year and see this oncologist twice a year.

At year one and two (days 365 and 730), I returned to my transplant oncologist for my final two biopsies which found no residual disease.  At year one, they re-did my childhood vaccinations from dead viral sources; at year two, I received my remaining vaccinations from live viral sources.

There’s good reason to say my story is “as good as it gets.” First, I got into remission on the first round of induction chemotherapy. This does not happen for a significant minority of AML patients who require multiple rounds of chemotherapy or other treatments to attain remission.

Second, I had full donor engraftment in three weeks. Most patients achieve engraftment, but it typically takes longer or doesn’t happen as completely as it did in my case. In the worst-case scenario, a small percentage of patients never experience engraftment and face a very poor prognosis.

Third, I have had no graft-vs.-host disease. I had been told there was a 60-70% chance of acute (within the first 100 days) GVHD in cases like mine, but I had no symptoms that could be attributed to this cause. That reduced my chances of chronic (after the first 100 days) GVHD to 20%. Although it can appear years after transplant, I’ve had no symptoms as of this writing.

What is typical about my story are the various infections, unpleasant side-effects, and minor complications documented here. They are simply part and parcel of the disease, treatment, and transplant; few if any patients escape them altogether. But in my case, they were quite manageable with the excellent support I received from my medical practitioners and caregiver team. Thanks to them, I left my transplant hospital on day 19 and never returned.

Advice is cheap, so here’s my two cent’s worth. Even in the best-case scenario, recovery is so gradual that it’s hard to realize when you are actually making progress (especially when there are periodic setbacks). I learned to pay attention to even small steps of improvement and took heart when they occurred.

Here’s one example. Around day 40, I ran up a flight of stairs at home and became short of breath. I initially found this discouraging, but then I realized I hadn’t even run up a flight of stairs since my diagnosis, and that this was progress not regress. Recovery happens through small, incremental changes that eventually culminate in qualitative improvement. It helps to be aware of these small steps as they occur; you may even want to record them in a weekly journal to fully appreciate them.

Finally, some clichés bear repeating. Recovery is a marathon, not a sprint. Moreover, it’s a marathon on an obstacle course of potential complications. Don’t hesitate to ask for help from your doctors or accept assistance from your caregivers. It’s not a burden; it actually makes them feel better when they can help you out. Finally, cultivate patience, resilience, and fortitude as you go the distance. It will serve you well.

Confused About AML Genetic Testing and Treatment? What You Need to Know

Confused About AML Genetic Testing and Treatment? What You Need to Know. from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

What is AML genetic testing? Dr. Alice Mims explains genetic testing in AML, including the necessity of testing, the effect on treatment decisions, and why patients should be retested over the course of their disease.
 
Dr. Alice Mims is a hematologist specializing in acute and chronic myeloid conditions. She serves as the Acute Leukemia Clinical Research Director at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – James.

See More From INSIST! AML

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How is Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) Treated?

 

Effective AML Combination Treatment: Pairing Old and New Therapies

 

AML Genetic Testing Explained

Transcript:

Dr. Mims:

So, in regards to older treatments and being effective, seven plus three, which is an intensive chemotherapy, is still the standard of care treatment for patients with favorable risk AML, if they’re candidates for intensive treatments because it is potentially curative. And 7 + 3 is also the backbone for newly diagnosis for patients with FLT3 mutations, we add a FLT3 inhibitor called Midostaurin onto that, as it’s shows to improve overall survival with the addition of that compared to just the chemotherapy alone.  

And also, hypomethylating agents, which are a less intensive treatment, were the standard of care for patients who couldn’t tolerate intensive chemotherapy.  

And now we’re seeing the addition of other agents being added to this, like the BCL2 inhibitor of Venetoclax 

And recent data in phase 3 trial comparing the hypomethylating agent alone versus adding that agent did show an overall survival advantage. And so, these are definitely evolving, and I think as we are learning more about targeted therapies and how they can best be used in combination with chemotherapy other than single. Agent. But you give two targeted therapies together and having even better outcomes. We hope we continue to make improvements from where we were even just five years ago and do a better job for. 

How is Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) Treated?

How is Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) Treated? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

 When diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML), understanding available treatment options can be overwhelming. Dr. Alice Mims, an AML specialist, provides an overview of AML therapies and discusses factors to consider when deciding on an appropriate therapy with your healthcare team.

Dr. Alice Mims is a hematologist specializing in acute and chronic myeloid conditions. She serves as the Acute Leukemia Clinical Research Director at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – James.

See More From The Pro-Active AML Patient Toolkit


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Facing a Cancer Diagnosis: Advice From An Expert

 

Effective AML Combination Treatment: Pairing Old and New Therapies

 

AML Treatment Options: What’s Available?


Transcript:

For the past 30 years, we’ve had the same treatment options, which have been standard intensive induction chemotherapy that weren’t really tailored to individual patients and had significant toxicity. And not necessarily effective for all AML genomic subtypes.

Now we have quite a bit added to the treatment arsenal for AML, including continuing intensive induction chemotherapy for patients who are appropriate. There’s also been the addition for newly diagnosed patients for hypomethylating agents and a new BCL-2 inhibitor called Venetoclax. IDH inhibitors for patients with IDH1 and IDH2 mutations. The addition of FLT3 inhibitors for patients either newly diagnosed or with relapse or refractory disease.

And liposomal daunorubicin and cytarabine in for patients with AML with MDS related changes or therapy related AML that are newly diagnosed. Lastly, there’s also a hedgehog inhibitor, glasdegib, that’s been approved for newly diagnosed AML patients in combination with low dose cytarabine.  

So, when working with patients, there are multiple factors that we take into consideration when coming up with a treatment decision together and it really should be a team approach. But one of the most important things is trying to understand the patient’s goals of care.

Because different treatments have different expectations, side effects, toxicities that we want to be sure we’re all aligned when we’re making a treatment decision together. Also, other features that we take into account can be age. Other comorbidities, including other diagnosis such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and other medical issues patients may have.

So, for roles that patients have in making these decisions, they should know that they’re their own best advocate. And so, as you’re getting to learn your oncologist who’s helping you make these treatment decisions, it’s very important that you talk about things that are important to you in regards to quality of life, overall goals for your life. Ask questions in regard to side effects and expectations for outcomes for potential treatment. Whether they’re curative or more palliative, which can extend life. And for quality of life, it may not be curative for AML.  

So, AML really was considered a single disease 30, 20 years ago. Now we really know it’s likely dozens of diseases based off of looking at molecular features of an individual patient’s AML. So, it’s very important to try to understand what genomic features your AML may have, meaning DNA mutations that are just present in the leukemia cells. Chromosomal changes as well. And then understanding if, based off that information, that that may afford you additional treatment options other than the current standards of care.  

Effective AML Combination Treatment

Pairing Old and New Therapies

Effective AML Combination Treatment: Pairing Old and New Therapies from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

With advances in AML research and a number of new treatments, can older therapy types still play a role in care? Dr. Alice Mims discusses pairing early AML treatments with new agents to boost their effectiveness.

Dr. Alice Mims is a hematologist specializing in acute and chronic myeloid conditions. She serves as the Acute Leukemia Clinical Research Director at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – James.

See More From The Pro-Active AML Patient Toolkit


Related Resources

 

Key Genetic Testing After an AML Diagnosis

 

How is Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) Treated?

 

AML Treatment Advances: What’s  New for YOU?


Transcript:

So, in regards to older treatments and being effective, seven plus three, which is an intensive chemotherapy, is still the standard of care treatment for patients with favorable risk AML, if they’re candidates for intensive treatments because it is potentially curative. And 7 + 3 is also the backbone for newly diagnosis for patients with FLT3 mutations, we add a FLT3 inhibitor called Midostaurin onto that, as it’s shows to improve overall survival with the addition of that compared to just the chemotherapy alone.

And also, hypomethylating agents, which are a less intensive treatment, were the standard of care for patients who couldn’t tolerate intensive chemotherapy.

And now we’re seeing the addition of other agents being added to this, like the BCL2 inhibitor of Venetoclax.

And recent data in phase 3 trial comparing the hypomethylating agent alone versus adding that agent did show an overall survival advantage. And so, these are definitely evolving, and I think as we are learning more about targeted therapies and how they can best be used in combination with chemotherapy other than single. Agent. But you give two targeted therapies together and having even better outcomes. We hope we continue to make improvements from where we were even just five years ago and do a better job for.