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Expert Advice for Navigating AML Treatment and Care Decisions

Expert Advice for Navigating AML Treatment and Care Decisions from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

AML expert Dr. Ann-Kathrin Eisfeld reviews the importance of essential testing and explains how the results may impact the care and treatment of patients with AML. Dr. Eisfeld also shares updates on new and developing AML research.

Dr. Ann-Kathrin Eisfeld is Director of the Clara D. Bloomfield Center for Leukemia Outcomes Research at The Ohio State University and a member of the Leukemia Research Program at the OSUCCC – James. Learn more about Dr. Eisfeld.

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Related Resources:

How Does the Presence of Molecular Markers Affect AML Care

Does Maintenance Therapy Have a Role in AML Care

Advances in AML Research _ Where Do Clinical Trials Fit In

Transcript:

Katherine Banwell:

Hello and welcome. I’m Katherine Banwell, your host for today’s webinar. Today’s program is a part of our Insist series. We’ll discuss how to access the most personalized AML therapy for your individual disease and why it’s vital to insist on key testing. Before we meet our guest, let’s review a few important details 

The reminder email you received about this program contains a link to a program resource guide. If you haven’t already, click that link to access information to follow along during the webinar. Before we get into the discussion, please remember that this program is not a substitute for seeking medical advice. Please refer to your healthcare team about what might be best for you. Well, let’s meet our guest today. Joining me is Dr. Ann-Kathrin Eisfeld. Dr. Eisfeld, welcome. Would you please introduce yourself?  

Dr. Eisfeld:

Hi, thank you so much, Kathrine. Yes. My name is Ann-Kathrin Eisfeld. I’m currently an assistant professor and hematologist at the Ohio State University. 

And I’m also serving as the director of the Clara D. Bloomfield Center for leukemia outcomes research at the James. 

Katherine Banwell:

Thank you so much for joining us today and taking the time to discuss this important issue. To set the stage for today’s discussion, Let’s start with this important question. How would you define personalized medicine as it relates to AML care? 

Dr. Eisfeld:

I define personalized medicine in AML as have a complete testing at time of diagnosis that consists of not only the morphology of the bone marrow, but we call immunophenotyping, which is looking at the surface markers, but also full review of all the chromosomes, which is called cytogenetics. And with those metaphase testing, I’m looking really at all of them and at the hot spots, which is done by a technique called FISH 

And then most importantly, for personalized testing, it also needs to consist of testing the most common, recurrent gene mutations. Changes in the tumor DNA that we know are contributing to the disease biology and also to the response of the leukemia to different genes.   

Katherine Banwell:

Thank you for that, Dr. Eisfield. That helps guide us as we begin our conversation.  

I imagine that personalizing therapy for a patient requires a number of tests and then thorough review of the test results. Could you provide an overview of the tests necessary to help understand a patient’s specific AML? 

Dr. Eisfeld:

Yes. Absolutely. There are multiple things that go in. And let me –even before we go into the tests – point out one thing. Because as we talk about individualized care – and it is also important to keep in mind that it will be also dependent on the age and of the performance status of the patient. 

Because we know that all the changes that are going to be reviewed might be more or less severe depending on really the age of the patient we are discussing. The most critical aspect for every AML patient is a bone marrow biopsy and a bone marrow aspirate on which the testing that I have been referring to are performed.  

One, it gives us information about how the – after review of the hematologist, it gives us information about the specific kind of the leukemic cell.  

And very importantly – and this is a very more recent development that we know about that’s important. It also tells us whether the acute leukemia is really happening as an acute leukemia or whether the patient without knowing it before might have had a precursor issue. And this is something that by now really in just about half a year we can use in addition to direct treatment.  

So, it seems like an ancient thing that we think that the microscopic review is important. But that is one part of it.  

The second part – and this is, again, all based on the bone marrow biopsy. The inspection of chromosomes, as I mentioned, may be called cytogenetics. This test takes longer. It sometimes takes up to two weeks to result. And similar, looking at the tumor DNAs and mutations that is done either if you’re at a large institution such as Ohio State or other cancer centers. It’s done in house. Whereas at smaller institutions, it would be done by a sent-out testing that has these recommended gene mutation testings done. And some of those result just within a couple of days.   

And these are – but we can talk. And I know we are going to talk a little bit more about it later, but we now have targeted therapies available. This is a really super exciting topic we couldn’t have talked about just even five years ago. And those mutations and those DNA changes come back usually within three to five days.  

So, that we are able to decide on treatment. 

Katherine Banwell:

How can someone ensure they’re getting an accurate diagnosis? 

Dr. Eisfeld:

That’s a very good question. I think the most important part is to go to somebody who has seen acute leukemias as a living. It is a very rare cancer as you know. And if you are seen even by a general oncologist who might be a fantastic oncologist, he might just see one or two cases per year. And thus, might not be up-to-date on the newest recommendations. So, I can just advise anybody – even if he lives further away and trusts his physician a lot – to – for the diagnosis and for treatment planning, come to a comprehensive cancer center, at least for a therapy planning. Because what is now possible is many of these treatments is that we can just give advice.   

And then you can still receive treatment in some cases really back at home. But be sure the testing was done correctly. And really give you every option to take into consideration what the best treatment would be for you, what the best treatment is for the patient. Having this trip – which can be hours of a drive. And I appreciate this. Having that done once would be, I think, the best thing to do.  

Katherine Banwell:

Many cancer types are typically staged. But that’s not the case with AML. AML is often considered low risk or high risk. Is that right? 

Dr. Eisfeld:

Yes. And we – I think that’s very well how you put it. And we can even – they even add an intermediate risk by now to it. And I love this question because that’s what I like to study or what I’m studying here. The one important thing to keep in mind – and this is something even many hematologists don’t think about is that the risk assignment of acute leukemia, of AML if you think about it as low, or high, or intermediate risk is risk – or is actually better said not risk, but chances to respond to conventional chemotherapy. So, the way all this was defined is that if you have, for example, a multitude of chromosomal abnormalities – as you call it complex karyotypes – it would be considered adverse. This means your chances of responding to the standard of care in terms of chemotherapy are very, very low.   

And similarly, if you have other changes such as a NPM1 mutation, your chances are considered very high. And but – so, the risk assignment with the increase of treatments now changes. We still also – and when I look at that, I think about it in the same way. But in my mind, if I’m talking to a patient, I’m trying to make sure to say, this is considered an intermediate or adverse risk.  

But this means that I would not, at the first place, consider you for a standard chemotherapy but rather advise you to participate in a clinical trial or have an alternative care. The second implication especially for younger patients would be to – if you’re intermediate or adverse risk, that you would routinely be considered for bone marrow transplant or stem cell transplant.       

Katherine Banwell:

Okay. So, what does it mean to be high risk then?  

Dr. Eisfeld:

It means that your likelihood of going into remission – the standard of care is very low. This means – I mean, in very practical numbers, it might be as low as 20 or 30 percent. This meaning getting the leukemia into remission, there are very important differences. The first step at every time in the same high risk means if the patient receives the treatment, how high are the chances that we can get rid of the leukemia? 

The second question is how high are the chances once it’s gone that it stays away? Or how high are the chances of relapse? In adverse risk most cases, it’s both – a combination of those. The chances of going into complete remission are lower and the chances of it coming back are higher. So, we have to be very aggressive. This means that we have to consider alternative treatment options. And even if we are then lucky and achieve remission, that we might have to move to more intensive additional treatments such as a bone marrow transplant.    

Katherine Banwell:

Dr. Eisfeld, the landscape of AML has changed significantly in recent years. How have advances in testing improved patient care?  

Dr. Eisfeld:

It is a different world, Katherine, honestly. I mean, I started practicing in hematology in taking care of AML patients back in Germany actually in the year 2007. 

Back then, there was no other testing that was available. All we were guiding and all that we had available was morphology and cytogenetics. And very often, it was very inaccurate. And we also only had two treatment kinds available. One was intensive chemotherapy, and one was something that was just a little bit better than best supportive care. So, many patients could not receive treatment. And the increase in knowledge that we have on a molecular level in AML really did two things at once.  On one, we understood we had a more fine tuned understanding on which patients would respond. And the second thing is that this knowledge about the molecular landscape enabled us to have new treatments available that are sometimes in pill form that can target specific mutations in patients who carry these genetic changes.   

Katherine Banwell:

Should all AML patients undergo in-depth testing like biomarker testing or cytogenetics? 

Dr. Eisfeld:

Yes. Every patient should do that. It can make the difference between life and death. And it can make the difference between receiving – having a hospital stay of four weeks with intensive chemotherapy versus taking the pill at home. This is very rare that this is possible. But it is possible. And of course, you – one would not want to miss this chance if it would be possible.   

Katherine Banwell:

With all the new tools that are available, what other factors do you consider when working with an AML patient to choose a treatment approach for them? 

Dr. Eisfeld:

The most important aspects are what we call – and this is – I’m glad that you bring this question up because I feel you have to think of – and that was what we’ve been talking about – called disease-associated factors. This is everything in the leukemic cell. They – how does a leukemia looks like? How does the blast look like? What changes are there?  

That’s the biggest part of what I would call patient-associated factors: the patient age, the patient performance status, actually the patient. In every – because I think, sometimes, we forget about it. But we just look at all the molecular testing.  

But even if – for example, there would be a patient with a very good risk leukemia, where I think, “Oh, this leukemia should respond very well to an intensive chemotherapy.” 

If the patient cannot tolerate chemotherapy or – and I see it more often than I would wish for patients who are young who have a great performance status, but they just cannot – they – their family reasons. Small children sometimes – they just cannot be away for so long. This all comes into consideration. So, it’s really important because we all work together as a team. And the right treatment for the leukemia might not be the right treatment for the patient.   

And for most cases, however, I think, it will only work if one stands with a whole heart with those physicians, and patients, and family. Because it’s a long journey behind the care that’s being given. And so, this is a joint decision-making, and there are different options that can be done. Of course, I would not advise something where I would think there are no chances of success.  

And so, this has to be an open discussion. But this is – it’s very often a very tough treatment to communicate that and see what are the goals of each patient? That will be most important for treatment and decision-making.     

Kathrine Banwell:

Dr. Eisfeld, we’ve been discussing treatment choices and how they vary for individual patients. What types of AML treatment classes are currently available? 

Dr. Eisfeld:

This is a very good question. The most classic treatment class is intensive chemotherapy. This is just because people might have heard the names. It is called 3 + 7 or 7 + 3, which refers to one weeklong impatient chemotherapy treatment. But you get one chemotherapy for seven days. And the first three days, you get a second treatment as well.  

That’s why it’s called three in seven in here, but it’s a total of seven days. So, we have intensive chemotherapy. And there are different flavors of it. But this is usually the backbone. The second class is what I would call a targeted inhibitor. And here we can look at two different aspects. We have target inhibitors for a specific DNA mutation that are found. And specifically, one are called IDH or FLT3 mutations.  

And these are pill forms that I usually by now combined with a third drop class which is called hypomethylating agents. And I will go through in a moment.  

But these are pills that really only work in patients and carry that genetic change. They have very, very low toxicity and very high chances of working. So, that’s why this testing is so important to see if one is one of the 15 percent of AML patients carrying an IDH mutation – 15 percent isn’t low. And a similar rate carries a FLT3 mutation.  

And then there is also going to target inhibitors. That is targeted because it is against what I would call a pathway. The gene that is commonly activated in acute leukemia – and this is called BCL-2 and the drug is called venetoclax (Venclexta).  

This is now stormed through the acute myeloid leukemia world in just a few years ago and has been approved as a front-line treatment option for several patients, especially for those who are older. And we know that even patients who respond usually favorably to chemotherapy, some of those also respond well to venetoclax the Bcl-2 inhibitor. The benefit is that this treatment in many cases if it works, can be done as an outpatient in here and has very often lower complications.  

It is actually has so good results that I – sometimes it seems too easy. So, we actually advise patients to still try to get – the first time they get the treatment, do it at a center where it’s done more commonly. Because it sometimes – don’t underestimated the power of a pill. And it’s still a very, very powerful drug. So, doing it in a controlled setting – because if cancer cells break down, they break down and can create all sorts of trouble.  

So, that is really something – for several leukemias, it can be concerning. And again, now the treatment group would be called hypomethylating agents. The names are azacitidine (Vidaza) and decitabine (Dacogen). And they act in a very different way. They try to change the epigenetics like methylation patterns. And often, if it is an untargeted way of the tumor cells and they can be used alone.  

Or very often by now in combination with the targeted inhibitors that I was just mentioning. These are infusions that can be done either over five, seven, or 10 days depending on the combination treatment. And for patients, as I mentioned before, that don’t respond well to many other options to those patients with a complex karyotype. This is, for example, a scenario where patients can just receive this as their only therapy.          

Katherine Banwell:

What about stem cell transplant? You didn’t mention that.  

Dr. Eisfeld:

Yes. That would be the next one. So, stem cell transplant always comes as an option, which I would call as a maintenance therapy. Again, two aspects. We have two different end goals.  

First is get rid of some leukemia. Second is to make sure it stays away. And as soon as the leukemia is in complete remission, depending on the performance status – the agent. Again, in multiple different things. It’s not an easy decision. 

At that time, there has to be a conversation. And that always involves a leukemia physician and a transplant physician very often. These are different providers that goes for the risks and benefits. Where the question is if I only continue to do chemotherapy – because it’s never only once. You would always have to repeat your chemotherapy. What is the likelihood that the leukemia comes back, and does it outweigh the risks that comes with the stem cell or bone marrow transplant that comes in here. But for many leukemias, especially for young patients and for patients with higher risks, this is the only chance of a cure. That is the most curative and only curative attempt for many leukemia attempts.  

Katherine Banwell:

Where do clinical trials fit into the treatment plan? 

Dr. Eisfeld:

That is the absolute backbone. We always have to think about that. 

Everything – all the treatment options that I mentioned – have been clinical trials, just very, very short time – very few years ago. So, every patient that comes to a leukemia or a cancer center, clinical trials will be discussed if they’re available. Because they will provide a special opportunity to have even more fine-tuned treatments – either newer agents. And I think what is very important to mention is that all clinical trials that are available would give the option of the best standard of care. And then the hope that a patient wouldn’t be getting any of the best standard of care options that are approved. The hope is that the new agent or added agent in many cases would even do better.  

It’s also important that there’s a lot of additional monitoring during the trial. I think it can be seen in two ways as two parts of a coin. In one way, it may be additional visits to the hospital or additional blood draws that are necessary to be sure that the medications are safe, and that researchers and conditions can learn about it. But on the other hand, it also gives you this extra bit of being looked after and really getting checked in and out, making sure that all organs are functioning that everything is just going fine. And many patients appreciate this a lot. And they have this pair of extra eyes on them all the time.  

Katherine Banwell:

Dr. Eisfeld, what therapies are available for AML patients who relapse or don’t respond to initial therapy? And is this treatment approach different from those who are newly diagnosed?   

Dr. Eisfeld:

Most of the time, the treatments available at relapse are the same available at the first diagnosis. Just because we know now that, for example, if you have a molecular marker that, for example, is available, it would act with also relatively high chance of relapse upset. However, at relapse, the most important thing I personally would do is consider a clinical trial even stronger than in the first mindset. 

Because it means that the leukemia outsmarted current treatments very often. So, usually what we would be doing is see if there is a targeted inhibitor or a cell mutation FLT3 or IDH, which I would personally always prefer to go in MLL rearrangement now for the new menin inhibitors where one would go with the same option as if it would have been their diagnosis. But if not to really consider clinical trials is a strong urge. 

Katherine Banwell:

Should patients or should relapse patients undergo genetic testing again? Is it necessary?  

Dr. Eisfeld:

Yes. At any time. Yes. Because we know that the leukemia changes. And you just can think about it in the way is that the cells that are surviving treatment, they’ve become smart. There was so much poison. There was so much treatment put on them. 

And the ones that survive might have a quiet additional chromosome change as additional gene changes. And even if a genetic change has not been present at time of diagnosis, the reason the cell has survived might have been that it has now one of these changes that came up on a later time during treatment or while the cell is hiding somewhere to come back.  

Katherine Banwell:

Are there therapies in development that are showing promise for patients with AML? 

Dr. Eisfeld:

There are so many of those. It’s hard to count. And this makes me very happy. There are exciting and again, targeted drugs.  

Once drug class is called menin inhibitors, which we – which were just published that show high promise.  

And again, very difficult to treat several groups of patients who harbor chromosome changes in MLL genes in here. So, that is a very exciting option.  

And there’s very exciting treatments with respect to what you call antibodies – monoclonal antibodies that protects the surface proteins that are being checked regularly. And one of those, for example, is called magrolimab. And that has even promise in these high-risk leukemias or adverse risk leukemias.  

And then we are not there yet, but I’m sure we will be in the not too near future. There are also multiple trials that are looking at what we call CAR-T cells. But patients might have heard about for lymphomas or acute lymphoblastic leukemias. AML is a little more tricky with respect to those. 

But we’ve seen pre-clinical studies that look really exciting. And I think it’s just going to be just a little more fine-tuning to make those easier, available, and more targeted for AML patients. And I’m very much looking forward to seeing those come more onto the market.      

Katherine Banwell:

You mentioned the new menin inhibitors. Who are they right for?   

Dr. Eisfeld:

We try to find out more, but definitely for patients that have been shown to be beneficial for patients who have chromosomal and rearrangements of the MLL gene or KMT2A gene. And there’s also good data on patients who have NPM1 mutations.  

Even though we know – and these are mutations who harbor this kind of genetic change – have now a plethora, which is a great, of treatment options.

Because we know even conventional chemotherapy has been working decently well in them. We know that venetoclax also is supposed to work very well in them. But again, the data on the menin inhibitor with respect to NPM1 mutations is very exciting. 

Katherine Banwell:

So, Dr. Eisfeld, we’ve covered a lot of information related to AML care. As a researcher, what other topics are currently top of mind for you in the field of AML? What are you passionate about? 

Dr. Eisfeld:

Again, so many parts. I think there are probably three main things that I’d like to name. And I think about it as a little bit outside the box. Most of what we know about AML, we have become so much better. It’s because we have been studying patients who were treated over the past decades on clinical trials and very often here in the U.S. or in Europe.  

 But all clinical trials have a bias in that most of them have been done A) on patients who are younger than the age of 60. And B) fewer patients of other races and ethnicities included. And had patients not included that have AML, for example, not only in the bone marrow but on extramedullary sites – how we call it – up to 10 percent of their patients. And also, very often have not been done on very old patients where the AML is very common. So, all the patients – patients from other race, ethnicities, or underrepresented minorities, and patients who present with extramedullary disease are currently in my – underserved.  

And these are exciting areas and opportunities of research and of active clinical practice. Because those are the patients we need to include if it’s possible now to include them in clinical trials. 

If there are no trials available, then make sure any other additional molecular testing it done to understand them better and to advance our disease knowledge that we make sure that we can give the best possible care.  

Katherine Banwell:

I think that the most important part is to get the molecular testing, and to enroll into clinical trials, and then to very often biobanking 

Why am I saying that is because our knowledge AML comes from patients who donated some tissue so that we could learn – researchers decades ago could learn about the genes. We know that leukemias differ so much in between patients.  

So, I am worried that we are yet missing out on potentially important genes that need to be discovered and where we could develop docs for. This will only be possible with these additional testing. 

 The second part is to really consider going to larger treatment and larger treatment cancer center. And there are support systems in case that can help in here.  

And the third part is to get involved even as early as possible even if you’re not personally affected, with Be The Match – with bone marrow transplant because there’s a paucity of donors, of people of color that makes it harder for these patients to get a potentially curative treatment in here.  

We have other options now in bone marrow transplant where one can use only half-matching donors and or other availabilities. But again, that doesn’t outweigh that the bone marrow and donor registry that we need to get better at.  

And I can – there are just so many factors – such a high degree of structural racism that affects people from every corner. And I think we as physicians, as society, and everybody need to acknowledge that. And we have to make sure that we get better to, again, give every patient the best care and keep the patient in mind and see what’s right for them at the right moment.    

Katherine Banwell:

Where can patients or people who are interested find out about being a donor? 

Dr. Eisfeld:

There is the website called “Be the Match” that one can put in. This is probably the best way to get first information.   

And usually, at all the cancer sites. And sometimes, there is information at lab donation places, universities, either or the American Red Cross.  

Usually those places have information laid out there as well.    

Katherine Banwell:

Dr. Eisfeld, before we close, I’d like to get your thoughts on where we stand with progress in the field of AML. What would you like to leave the audience with? Are you hopeful? 

Dr. Eisfeld:

I am incredibly hopeful. I hope – when I started working in hematology, as I said at that time, it was just about when imatinib (Gleevec) came out. Which is this CML pill that really revolutionized care. And so, at that time, I would be – all patients on that bone marrow transplant service had chronic myeloid leukemia. And because they all had to undergo bone marrow transplant. Then Gleevec came, and today, there are no such patients who are see or very rarely that require such intensive care.  

So, I am very hopeful that in my practice time, which hopefully –and even earlier on – that there will be a time where we find targeted therapies for almost all patients.  

Katherine Banwell:

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

Dr. Eisfeld:

It’s an absolute pleasure. And if there are ever any questions, please feel free to reach out. For patients who reach out, we are there to talk to all of you and give advice as good as we can or put you in contact with the right people.   

Katherine Banwell:

Thank you. And thank you to all of our collaborators. To learn more about AML and to access tools to help you become a proactive patient, visit powerful patients.org. I’m Katherine Banwell. Thanks for joining us today.  

Disease Monitoring: Is My AML Treatment Working?

Disease Monitoring: Is My AML Treatment Working? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Dr. Eytan Stein explains how AML treatment effectiveness is monitored and why it’s essential for patients to report any symptoms or side effects to their healthcare team.

Dr. Eytan Stein is a hematologist oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and serves as Director of the Program for Drug Development in Leukemia in Division of Hematologic Malignancies. Learn more about Dr. Stein, here.

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Transcript:

Katherine Banwell:

Once treatment has begun, Dr. Stein, how do you know if it’s working?  

Dr. Eytan Stein:

So, that’s a good question. So, the good thing about acute myeloid leukemia when it comes to understanding what’s going on, you know, it’s a disease of the bone marrow cells. And we do bone marrow biopsies to see how things are doing. But no one likes a bone marrow biopsy. It can be a somewhat uncomfortable procedure.  

Katherine Banwell:

How often would a patient need to have a biopsy? 

Dr. Eytan Stein:

Yeah, so they have bone marrow biopsies at diagnosis, and then they often will have bone marrow biopsies two weeks to a month later.  

And then, if they’re in remission, basically any time you think if you want to check to see if they’re in remission or if you suspect the patient is relapsing. Then, you would do a bone marrow biopsy. But what I was getting at is that but you have blood. And the blood is kind of like the bellwether of what’s going on in the bone marrow.  

So, the analogy I use for my patients is, you know, when you’re driving your car and you have – you know, you don’t open the hood every day to make sure the car is running okay. You know, you’re driving your car, and if your car starts making a funny clinking sound, that’s when you open the hood.  

So, the blood is like the clinking sound. If you see something going wrong in the blood, that’s when you know you’ve got to open the hood and look under the hood. If the car is running just fine and you don’t see anything wrong in the blood, using the analogy, maybe you don’t need to do a bone marrow biopsy. 

Katherine Banwell:

What if a treatment isn’t working? What if it stops working or if the patient relapses? What do you do then? 

Dr. Eytan Stein:

Yeah, so when a patient relapses, which unfortunately happens more than we want it to, it’s important number one to do another bone marrow biopsy and at that point, do that mutational testing again because the mutations that are present at the time of diagnosis are not necessarily going to be present at the time of relapse, and sometimes, a new mutation might occur at the time of relapse.  

And again, what that mutational profile shows can help determine what the next best treatment for the patient is. There might be standard-of-care therapies. More chemotherapy might be recommended.  

When a patient relapses, I usually – excuse me – try to get them on a clinical trial because that’s the point where I think clinical trial drugs really have potentially major benefit for the patients, to help get them back into remission. 

How Do Gene Mutations Affect AML Treatment Choices?

How Do Gene Mutations Affect AML Treatment Choices? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Dr. Eytan Stein shares why AML patients should undergo molecular testing when choosing a treatment approach, explaining how targeted therapy works to treat AML patients who have specific genetic mutations.

Dr. Eytan Stein is a hematologist oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and serves as Director of the Program for Drug Development in Leukemia in Division of Hematologic Malignancies. Learn more about Dr. Stein, here.

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Considerations When Choosing an AML Treatment

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What Are Current and Emerging AML Treatment Approaches?


Transcript:

Katherine Banwell:

Why is identification of genetic markers essential before choosing treatment?  

Dr. Eytan Stein:

Because when you know the genetic markers, you can target the genetic abnormalities, sometimes with specific targeted therapies, with therapies that fit like a key in a specific lock.  

And those targeted therapies have been shown, in some cases, to improve the survival of the patients, without much cost, without much toxicity. So, I’ll give you an example of this.  

There is a very common genetic abnormality in patients with acute myeloid leukemia called the FLT3 or FLT3 mutation. When you have that mutation, there is a targeted therapy that targets the FLT3 mutation called midostaurin (Rydapt), and it’s been shown in a very large clinical trial that the addition of the targeted FLT3 inhibitor midostaurin in combination with chemotherapy leads to better overall survival than chemotherapy alone.  

So, you need to know that information because you want to give your patient the best chance at beating the disease. And that’s why it’s also important to try to get this information back quickly. You know, no one wants to be sitting around waiting for four weeks to find out if they’ve got a specific mutation. And we’ve gotten better. I think medical centers generally have gotten better at getting this mutational information back to their doctors relatively quickly. 

Katherine Banwell:

Does every patient get this standard testing? 

Dr. Eytan Stein:

It is – does everyone get it? I don’t know. But “Should everyone get it?” is, I think, the important question. Yes, everyone should get this testing.  

It is incorporated into the NCCN and National Comprehensive Cancer Network and European Leukemia Net guidelines. It is important not only because you can think about targeted therapies, but it is also important for prognostic reasons, meaning that certain mutations lead to a higher risk of relapse, and those mutations in a patient might lead me to recommend a stem cell transplant, which is sort of the most intensive thing we can do to help prevent a relapse, while other mutations, which might be “favorable”, in quotes, they might lead me not to recommend a stem cell transplant.  

So, I think this mutational testing is the standard of care and should be done in every patient with newly diagnosed acute myeloid leukemia.  

What Are Current and Emerging AML Treatment Approaches?

What Are Current and Emerging AML Treatment Approaches? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

AML Expert Dr. Eytan Stein provides an overview of current and emerging treatment approaches for people living with AML.

Dr. Eytan Stein is a hematologist oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and serves as Director of the Program for Drug Development in Leukemia in Division of Hematologic Malignancies. Learn more about Dr. Stein, here.

See More from Thrive AML

Related Resources:

Considerations When Choosing an AML Treatment

How Do Gene Mutations Affect AML Treatment Choices?

Disease Monitoring: Is My AML Treatment Working?


Transcript:

Katherine Banwell:

What are the treatment types available to AML patients? You mentioned chemotherapy. What else is there? 

Dr. Eytan Stein:

Yeah, so if I was having this discussion with you, even when I first started my career back in 2013, all I would’ve been talking to you about was induction chemotherapy and maybe a lower-dose chemotherapy called hypomethylating agents.  

I think one thing that really needs to be recognized is that the advances we’ve made for the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia, over the past 10 years, have been just remarkable. We’ve had a number up to nine drug approvals over the past 10 years, and those therapies fall into the following categories.  

We now have therapies outside the strong induction consolidation we talked about. We have therapies such as targeted therapies that target specific gene mutations that are present in patients with acute myeloid leukemia. Those are often oral therapies that patients can take at home. And we have very effective therapies for older patients who usually can’t handle the side effects of induction chemotherapy. That’s the combination of a type of drug called a hypomethylating agent with a very, very powerful targeted drug called a BCL-2 inhibitor.  

One of those drugs, that drug is called venetoclax. That’s the one that’s FDA-approved. And the combination of those hypomethylating agents and venetoclax, has really changed the paradigm for how we treat older patients with acute myeloid leukemia, led to many patients who have been able to live much longer than they would have before this therapy came about.  

You know, there are other therapies that are in development, but I don’t know if we’ll end up talking about that a little bit later. But there are therapies such as immunotherapy, which has gotten a lot of press for other kinds of cancers, like one cancer called the rectal cancer, that aren’t yet approved for acute myeloid leukemia but are being developed for acute myeloid leukemia.   

So, the future of acute – the current treatments for acute myeloid leukemia are dramatically better than they were 10 years ago, and I would anticipate that we’re going to continue to see these kind of advances over the next 10 years.  

Katherine Banwell:

What about stem cell transplant? Who might be right for that? Who might be eligible? 

Dr. Eytan Stein:

Yeah, so let’s go back to the discussion a little bit about consolidation chemotherapy. So, when you have a patient that gets induction chemotherapy or gets any therapy – it doesn’t have to be chemotherapy – to put their disease into remission, for a large group of patients, we think that the best way to cure their disease is to do something called a stem cell transplant.  

So, what’s a stem cell transplant? What it is not is like a heart transplant or a liver transplant, which patients often don’t realize.  

So, it’s not a procedure where an organ is being transplanted through a surgical procedure. What it is is it’s acknowledging that the cause of acute myeloid leukemia is that the most primitive cells in the bone marrow, called the stem cells, are the cause of the disease. And the chemotherapies that we give patients to get them into remission don’t always eradicate those bad stem cells.  

So, what we’re able to do once a patient is in remission is we try to get them new stem cells. How do you get a patient new stem cells? Well, you go to a donor, and there’s a donor bank of people who have volunteered to donate stem cells to patients with acute myeloid leukemia. You go to the donor bank, and then you give chemotherapy to the patient to sort of wipe out their bad stem cells, and then you give them new stem cells that will hopefully permanently eradicate the disease. 

What ends up happening is that a large group of patients with acute myeloid leukemia end up being referred for a stem cell transplant. The reason is twofold. You know, it used to be – I keep talking about the past. I’m getting older, and so now I can talk about the past.  

Yeah. So, it used to be that stem cell transplants were really reserved to people less than 65 years old.  

But our advances in our ability to do stem cell transplants has allowed for us to now successfully do stem cell transplants on patients, even into their upper 70s and sometimes even at the age of 80.  

Katherine Banwell:

Where do clinical trials fit in to all of this? 

Dr. Eytan Stein:

Ah. So, clinical trials are extraordinarily important for a variety of reasons. Clinical trials are important because the only way we make advances on a societal level in the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia is by patients who are willing to participate in clinical trials. All of the – because these are trials that are testing new therapies with the goal of improving the survival and the quality of life of patients with acute myeloid leukemia. All these drugs I just talked about that have been approved over the past 10 years, they never would’ve been approved if patients hadn’t agreed to participate in clinical trials. So, that’s something that’s number one that’s very important.  

But on a – forget the societal level for a second. On a patient-specific level, a clinical trial can potentially benefit a patient because it offers a patient access to a new, exciting therapy that may really help in improving their outcome of having acute myeloid leukemia.  

Katherine Banwell:

Yeah. You mentioned emerging therapies. What are some of those? 

Dr. Eytan Stein:

Oh, there’s so many. So, it’s hard to talk about all of them, but I think there are targeted therapies – I think if you sort of break them up into sort of broad buckets, there are new targeted therapies that are being developed for subsets of patients with acute myeloid leukemia. One of the ones I’ve been working on pretty heavily over the past few years is a kind of drug called a menin inhibitor. This is an oral medication that is given to patients of acute myeloid leukemia who have certain genetic abnormalities, specifically either a mutation in a gene called NPM1, or a what is called a rearrangement in a gene called MLL.  

So, that’s a group of – that menin inhibition seems to be extraordinarily effective in treating patients, at least from the early data, for those specific subtypes of acute leukemia.  

The other therapies that are really getting a lot of play now are the immunotherapies, which I mentioned a second ago. There are immunotherapies that work to – called bispecific immunotherapies where what happens is it works to harness the immune system to kill the cancer cells. You may have heard a lot about CAR T-cell therapy, which is another way of harnessing the immune system and engineering immune cells to target acute myeloid leukemia cells. And the other thing I want to point out is that even if you don’t have a new therapy against a new target, you can imagine now that we’ve got all these 10 new approved drugs.  

But what we’re trying to figure out – one of the things we’re trying to figure out over the past few years has been what’s the best way to give these new drugs? What kind of combinations can you put them in that might make things even better? Maybe you should give two of those drugs first and then give another drug afterwards. And a lot of the research that’s being done now is being done to understand the best sequencing and combinations of drugs with the drugs that we already have approved. 

Thriving With AML: What You Should Know About Care and Treatment

Thriving With AML: What You Should Know About Care and Treatment from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

What should you consider when choosing acute myeloid leukemia (AML) care and treatment? Dr. Eytan Stein reviews factors that help guide care decisions for AML, discusses the goals of treatment as well as treatment options available, and shares tools for taking an active role in your care.

Dr. Eytan Stein is a hematologist oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and serves as Director of the Program for Drug Development in Leukemia in Division of Hematologic Malignancies. Learn more about Dr. Stein, here.

See More from Thrive AML

Related Resources:

Thriving With AML: What You Should Know About Care and Treatment Resource Guide

Shared Decision-Making, Advice for Partnering With Your AML Team

Which Tests Do You Need Before Deciding on an AML Treatment Path


Transcript:

Katherine Banwell:  

Hello, and welcome. I’m Katherine Banwell, your host for today’s webinar. Today’s program is about how to live and thrive with AML. We’re going to discuss the goals of AML treatment and how you can play an active role in your care. Before we get into the discussion, please remember that this program is not a substitute for seeking medical advice. Please refer to your healthcare team about what might be best for you. Well, let’s meet our guest today. Joining us is Dr. Eytan Stein. Dr. Stein, welcome. Would you please introduce yourself?  

Dr. Stein:

Thanks so much. My name is Eytan Stein. I work as an attending physician on the leukemia service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.  

Katherine Banwell:

Excellent. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. 

Dr. Stein:

Thank you for having me.  

Katherine Banwell:

Since this webinar is part of Patient Empowerment Network’s Thrive series, I thought we could start by getting your opinion on what you think it means to thrive with AML. 

Dr. Stein:

Yeah, so thriving with AML I think can mean different things to different people. Thriving with AML can mean when you have the disease, really having the fortitude to get through the treatment that you’re being given because sometimes that can be tough.  

And sometimes, it’s not easy. But the people who are thriving are the ones who are able to discuss with their doctors what their treatment is, what the side effects of that treatment might be, how to minimize those side effects, and how to get through that treatment so that not only do they feel better physically but can feel better emotionally and ultimately, hopefully go into a complete remission. 

Katherine Banwell:

Thank you for that, Dr. Stein. I think that helps guide us as we continue this conversation. Getting appropriate AML care is part of thriving, and when we consider treatment options, it’s important to understand the goal of treatment. So, how would you define treatment goals for patients? 

Dr. Stein:

Yeah, so the treatment goals for patients really come in different forms. I think fundamentally what everyone wants is everyone wants to go into a complete remission and be cured of their disease. And certainly, that’s an overarching goal that we aim to achieve with our treatments. But there are other goals that I think are important too to various patient populations, depending on what stage of life they’re in.  

Are they 85 years old or 90 years old and have lived a long, full life? And their goal might be to improve their blood count so they don’t need transfusions so frequently. And they might be able to go to that grandchild or great-grandchild’s wedding or other life event. There are other patients for whom the goal might be, very discreetly, just to get to that next step in their treatment.   

That next step in their treatment might be a bone marrow transplant. The next step in their treatment might be some more therapy. But I think overall as a doctor, our goal is always to do our best to get our patients into a complete remission and cure them while maintaining the best quality of life for our patients.  

Katherine Banwell:

What do you think is the patient’s role in setting treatment goals? 

Dr. Stein:

Well, it’s really important for the doctor to explore the goals of treatment when they first meet with the patient. I don’t think doctors should assume that all patients come into that first visit with the same goals. And what those goals are, I think, may differ a little bit from patient to patient. And it’s really important for the patient to express overtly what their goals are, what they want to achieve from the treatment. You know, I have some patients who come in to me and say, “My goal is to be cured and be alive for the next 30 years” or 40 years or 50 years.  

And I have some patients that come into treatment, and they say, “You know what, I have had a very, very long life, and I just want the best quality I can have for as long as I can possibly have it.” 

Katherine Banwell:

Yeah, that’s great advice. Thank you. As we move into the discussion about treatment for AML, let’s define a couple of terms that are often mentioned in AML care. What is induction therapy?   

Dr. Stein:

Yeah, so induction chemotherapy refers really to a type of chemotherapy that tends to be quite intensive, so strong chemotherapy that patients receive in the hospital setting. That induction chemotherapy typically requires a hospitalization of three to four weeks, sometimes a little bit longer, as the patient gets their treatment during the first week or so and then they’re recovering from the effects of that treatment during the next three weeks in the hospital.  

Katherine Banwell:

Okay. What is consolidation therapy? 

Dr. Stein:

Ah. So, a patient first gets induction chemotherapy. If they achieve a complete remission, so their disease goes away, that’s great. We know their disease seems to be gone. But we also know that patients relapse. So, if patients relapse, it means their disease wasn’t really gone. It’s just that we couldn’t find it. It was hiding somewhere.  

So, consolidation chemotherapy is chemotherapy that is given after a patient is in complete remission in an effort to kill any residual leukemia cells that may be hiding in the body, that we can’t see in our bone marrow biopsies, in an effort to deepen the remission that we’ve achieved during induction.  

Katherine Banwell:

Okay. Are there any other terms that patients should be familiar with? 

Dr. Stein:

There are. You know, there are a lot of other terms that patients should be familiar with. I’ll just touch on one because it can get complicated. We now have for acute myeloid leukemia, a type of therapy that goes beyond induction and consolidation called maintenance therapy.  

Maintenance therapy is when a patient is done with induction, done with consolidation, and the question is, can you give them something that is easy to take, relatively non-toxic, that they can take for a prolonged period of time, to also help prevent relapse? Maintenance therapy has been really a backbone of the treatment of a different kind of leukemia called acute lymphoblastic leukemia, which happens primarily in children for many years. Maintenance therapy is also now a backbone of therapy for a different kind of blood cancer called multiple myeloma. And very recently, only within the past year to two years, we’ve incorporated maintenance therapy for AML for certain groups of patients.  

Katherine Banwell:

Okay. What are the treatment types available to AML patients? You mentioned chemotherapy. What else is there? 

Dr. Stein:

Yeah, so if I was having this discussion with you, even when I first started my career back in 2013, all I would’ve been talking to you about was induction chemotherapy and maybe a lower-dose chemotherapy called hypomethylating agents.  

I think one thing that really needs to be recognized is that the advances we’ve made for the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia, over the past 10 years, have been just remarkable. We’ve had a number up to nine drug approvals over the past 10 years, and those therapies fall into the following categories.  

We now have therapies outside the strong induction consolidation we talked about. We have therapies such as targeted therapies that target specific gene mutations that are present in patients with acute myeloid leukemia. Those are often oral therapies that patients can take at home. And we have very effective therapies for older patients who usually can’t handle the side effects of induction chemotherapy. That’s the combination of a type of drug called a hypomethylating agent with a very, very powerful targeted drug called a BCL-2 inhibitor.  

One of those drugs, that drug is called venetoclax (Venclexta). That’s the one that’s FDA-approved. And the combination of those hypomethylating agents and venetoclax, has really changed the paradigm for how we treat older patients with acute myeloid leukemia, led to many patients who have been able to live much longer than they would have before this therapy came about.  

You know, there are other therapies that are in development, but I don’t know if we’ll end up talking about that a little bit later. But there are therapies such as immunotherapy, which has gotten a lot of press for other kinds of cancers, like one cancer called the rectal cancer, that aren’t yet approved for acute myeloid leukemia but are being developed for acute myeloid.  

So, the future of acute – the current treatments for acute myeloid leukemia are dramatically better than they were 10 years ago, and I would anticipate that we’re going to continue to see these kind of advances over the next 10 years.  

Katherine Banwell:

And we are going to talk further about that in a couple of minutes. What about stem cell transplant? Who might be right for that? Who might be eligible? 

Dr. Stein:

Yeah, so let’s go back to the discussion a little bit about consolidation chemotherapy. So, when you have a patient that gets induction chemotherapy or gets any therapy – it doesn’t have to be chemotherapy – to put their disease into remission, for a large group of patients, we think that the best way to cure their disease is to do something called a stem cell transplant.  

So, what’s a stem cell transplant. What it is not is like a heart transplant or a liver transplant, which patients often don’t realize.  

So, it’s not a procedure where an organ is being transplanted through a surgical procedure. What it is is it’s acknowledging that the cause of acute myeloid leukemia is that the most primitive cells in the bone marrow, called the stem cells, are the cause of the disease. And the chemotherapies that we give patients to get them into remission don’t always eradicate those bad stem cells.  

So, what we’re able to do once a patient is in remission is we try to get them new stem cells. How do you get a patient new stem cells? Well, you go to a donor, and there’s a donor bank of people who have volunteered to donate stem cells to patients with acute myeloid leukemia. You go to the donor bank, and then you give chemotherapy to the patient to sort of wipe out their bad stem cells, and then you give them new stem cells that will hopefully permanently eradicate the disease.  

What ends up happening is that a large group of patients with acute myeloid leukemia end up being referred for a stem cell transplant. The reason is twofold. You know, it used to be – I keep talking about the past. I’m getting older, and so now I can talk about the past.  

Katherine Banwell:

We’ll talk about the future in a couple of minutes. 

Dr. Stein:

Yeah. So, it used to be that stem cell transplants were really reserved to people less than 65 years old.  

But our advances in our ability to do stem cell transplants has allowed for us to now successfully do stem cell transplants on patients, even into their upper 70s and sometimes even at the age of 80.  

Katherine Banwell:

Wow, okay. That’s great. Where do clinical trials fit in to all of this? 

Dr. Stein:

Ah. So, clinical trials are extraordinarily important for a variety of reasons. Clinical trials are important because the only way we make advances on a societal level in the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia is by patients who are willing to participate in clinical trials. All of the – because these are trials that are testing new therapies with the goal of improving the survival and the quality of life of patients with acute myeloid leukemia. All these drugs I just talked about that have been approved over the past 10 years, they never would’ve been approved if patients hadn’t agreed to participate in clinical trials. So, that’s something that’s number one that’s very important.  

But on a – forget the societal level for a second. On a patient-specific level, a clinical trial can potentially benefit a patient because it offers a patient access to a new, exciting therapy that may really help in improving their outcome of having acute myeloid leukemia.  

Katherine Banwell:

Yeah. You mentioned emerging therapies. What are some of those? 

Dr. Stein:

Oh, there’s so many. So, it’s hard to talk about all of them, but I think there are targeted therapies – I think if you sort of break them up into sort of broad buckets, there are new targeted therapies that are being developed for subsets of patients with acute myeloid leukemia. One of the ones I’ve been working on pretty heavily over the past few years is a kind of drug called a menin inhibitor. This is an oral medication that is given to patients of acute myeloid leukemia who have certain genetic abnormalities, specifically either a mutation in a gene called NPM1, or a what is called a rearrangement in a gene called MLL.  

So, that’s a group of – that menin inhibition seems to be extraordinarily effective in treating patients, at least from the early data, for those specific subtypes of acute leukemia.  

The other therapies that are really getting a lot of play now are the immunotherapies, which I mentioned a second ago. There are immunotherapies that work to – called bispecific immunotherapies where what happens is it works to harness the immune system to kill the cancer cells. You may have heard a lot about CAR T-cell therapy, which is another way of harnessing the immune system and engineering immune cells to target acute myeloid leukemia cells. And the other thing I want to point out is that even if you don’t have a new therapy against a new target, you can imagine now that we’ve got all these 10 new approved drugs.  

But what we’re trying to figure out – one of the things we’re trying to figure out over the past few years has been what’s the best way to give these new drugs? What kind of combinations can you put them in that might make things even better? Maybe you should give two of those drugs first and then give another drug afterwards. And a lot of the research that’s being done now is being done to understand the best sequencing and combinations of drugs with the drugs that we already have approved. 

Katherine Banwell:

Great. All patients are different, of course, and what might work for one person might not be appropriate for another. How do you choose which treatment is right for a patient? 

Dr. Stein:

So, it’s an individualized decision. So, what you’re talking to the patient, as we talked about at the very beginning, is you really need to understand the patient’s goals for treatment. You need to understand the anticipated benefit of the treatment that you’re offering and need to understand the side effects of the treatment. 

So, and that sort of becomes the puzzle that you work with the patient at putting together. That is how well do I expect this treatment to work? What are the potential side effects of the treatment, and what are the patient’s goals? And when you sort of lay all those different pieces out, you then usually come up with something that becomes pretty clear what the best thing to do is.  

So, I’ll give you just a very concrete example of this. Sometimes, we have treatments where the medical data would suggest that they might work as well as one another, right? There’s no clear difference between each of the two treatments. But maybe one of the two treatments requires you to be in the hospital, and one of the treatments allows you to be at home.  

So, that’s an important discussion to have with the patient because some patients, believe it or not, want to be in the hospital, because they’re worried about being at home and having to manage this all themselves. Some patients don’t want to be in the hospital. Some patients want to be at home, because they’re scared of the hospital, or they’re worried the food’s going to be terrible.  

And then, that would be important in helping the patient make the decision for their treatment.  

Katherine Banwell:

Right. You mentioned earlier, Dr. Stein, the difference in ages and how you would treat different people depending on their age. So, when you’re choosing a treatment, you obviously look at age. What else? Things like comorbidities?  

Dr. Stein:

Yeah, so age, so I’m not ageist. So, it’s more that as people get older – and this is just a fact of life – as everyone gets older, their organs don’t work quite as well anymore, right? Things start breaking down as you get older. So, certain treatments aren’t appropriate for older people because the treatments a younger person, because their organs are working at 100 percent, may be able to handle it, while an older person, where their organs might only be working at 60, 70 percent, the treatment might not be as good of a choice for them. 

So, that’s what I mean. So, as people age, their comorbidities increase. So, we always look at comorbidities, and if you had an 80-year-old that was running marathons, I might think about their treatment differently than an 80-year-old who is not running marathons. But most 80- and 85-year-olds aren’t running marathons, so that’s why we sometimes think about their treatment differently.  

Katherine Banwell:

Yeah. Why is identification of genetic markers essential before choosing treatment?   

Dr. Stein:

Because when you know the genetic markers, you can target the genetic abnormalities, sometimes with specific targeted therapies, with therapies that fit like a key in a specific lock. And those targeted therapies have been shown, in some cases, to improve the survival of the patients, without much cost, without much toxicity. So, I’ll give you an example of this.  

There is a very common genetic abnormality in patients with acute myeloid leukemia called the FLT3 or FLT3 mutation. When you have that mutation, there is a targeted therapy that targets the FLT3 mutation called midostaurin, and it’s been shown in a very large clinical trial that the addition of the targeted FLT3 inhibitor midostaurin in combination with chemotherapy leads to better overall survival than chemotherapy alone.   

So, you need to know that information because you want to give your patient the best chance at beating the disease. And that’s why it’s also important to try to get this information back quickly. You know, no one wants to be sitting around waiting for four weeks to find out if they’ve got a specific mutation. And we’ve gotten better. I think medical centers generally have gotten better at getting this mutational information back to their doctors relatively quickly. 

 Katherine Banwell:

Does every patient get this standard testing? 

Dr. Stein:

It is – does everyone get it? I don’t know. But “Should everyone get it?” is, I think, the important question. Yes, everyone should get this testing.  

 It is incorporated into the NCCN and National Comprehensive Cancer Network and European Leukemia Net guidelines. It is important not only because you can think about targeted therapies, but it is also important for prognostic reasons, meaning that certain mutations lead to a higher risk of relapse, and those mutations in a patient might lead me to recommend a stem cell transplant, which is sort of the most intensive thing we can do to help prevent a relapse, while other mutations, which might be “favorable”, in quotes, they might lead me not to recommend a stem cell transplant.   

So, I think this mutational testing is the standard of care and should be done in every patient with newly diagnosed acute myeloid leukemia.  

Katherine Banwell:

Once treatment has begun, Dr. Stein, how do you know if it’s working? 

Dr. Stein:

So, that’s a good question. So, the good thing about acute myeloid leukemia when it comes to understanding what’s going on, you know, it’s a disease of the bone marrow cells. And we do bone marrow biopsies to see how things are doing. But no one likes a bone marrow biopsy. It can be a somewhat uncomfortable procedure.  

Katherine Banwell:

How often would a patient need to have a biopsy?  

Dr. Stein:

Yeah, so they have bone marrow biopsies at diagnosis, and then they often will have bone marrow biopsies two weeks to a month later.  

And then, if they’re in remission, basically any time you think if you want to check to see if they’re in remission or if you suspect the patient is relapsing. Then, you would do a bone marrow biopsy. But what I was getting at is that but you have blood. And the blood is kind of like the bellwether of what’s going on in the bone marrow.  

So, the analogy I use for my patients is, you know, when you’re driving your car and you have – you know, you don’t open the hood every day to make sure the car is running okay. You know, you’re driving your car, and if your car starts making a funny clinking sound, that’s when you open the hood.   

So, the blood is like the clinking sound. If you see something going wrong in the blood, that’s when you know you’ve gotta open the hood and look under the hood. If the car is running just fine and you don’t see anything wrong in the blood, using the analogy, maybe you don’t need to do a bone marrow biopsy. 

Katherine Banwell:

What if a treatment isn’t working? What if it stops working or if the patient relapses? What do you do then?  

Dr. Stein:

Yeah, so when a patient relapses, which unfortunately happens more than we want it to, it’s important No. 1 to do another bone marrow biopsy and at that point, do that mutational testing again because the mutations that are present at the time of diagnosis are not necessarily going to be present at the time of relapse, and sometimes, a new mutation might occur at the time of relapse. And again, what that mutational profile shows can help determine what the next best treatment for the patient is. There might be standard-of-care therapies. More chemotherapy might be recommended.  

When a patient relapses, I usually – excuse me – try to get them on a clinical trial because that’s the point where I think clinical trial drugs really have potentially major benefit for the patients, to help get them back into remission. 

Katherine Banwell:

Why is it essential for patients to share any issues they may be having with their healthcare team, specifically, sharing their symptoms and side effects?  

Dr. Stein:

Well, it’s important because we want to help you. I mean, I think that’s what it comes down to. All of us, whether it’s your doctor or your nurses or your nurse practitioner or physician’s assistant or anyone who is part of the healthcare system, we went into this business to help people. I mean, we knew what we were getting into when we went into this, and we want to help people. And one of the ways you help people is you help with their symptoms. So, if you’re not feeling well, you call up, and you say, “I’m not feeling well,” we can help you with that. You shouldn’t suffer in silence.  

I sometimes have patients who will say to me, “Oh, I was going to call you, but I didn’t want to bother you.” You’re not bothering us. This is what – it’s not like you’re calling and asking for mortgage advice, right? This is what we do. So, it’s very important to call us because the other thing is that you’re going to be more – it’s more likely that you’ll be able to complete your treatment if we manage the side effects that you’re having rather than just ignoring them.  

Katherine Banwell:

Yeah, that’s great advice. With more oral therapies becoming available, patients now have a role in self-administering their treatment. So, what happens if a patient forgets to take a medication? Does that impact its effectiveness? 

Dr. Stein:

The easy answer to that question is probably not. You know, if you forget to take a medication for three weeks, that’s not a good thing, but if there’s a – you know, this happens all the time, right?   

You’re busy, and you just forget. If you forget to take a medication one night or one day, it almost certainly is not going to make a huge difference. Having said that, you shouldn’t see that as license to not be careful. So, it is important to try. So, set an alarm; put out a pill container do the kinds of things that can help you.   

The other thing, there is a certain what I would call pill fatigue that sets in. Often, patients with AML are taking multiple medications at multiple times a day, and it can be hard. And at my center, we have pharmacists who do a lot of different things, but one of the things they can help with is sort of streamlining patients’ pill burden to make it easier for them to remember and to take the medications when they’re supposed to take them.  

Katherine Banwell:

When a patient does forget to take a dose or even a couple of days’ doses, should they call their healthcare team and let them know? 

Dr. Stein:

Yes, always call. Always call.  

Katherine Banwell:

Okay. I want to make sure we get to some of the audience questions. These were sent to us in advance of the program. Let’s start with this one from Patrick. He writes, “Are there any clinical trials looking at maintenance therapy for the AML patients, especially older patients?” 

Dr. Stein:

Yes, there are a number of clinical trials that are looking at maintenance therapy for older patients with acute myeloid leukemia. Some of those trials are maintenance therapies with targeted agents that are against specific mutations. Some of those trials are clinical trials with more broadly active agents that might be able to be used as maintenance therapy, so yes. Maintenance therapy is something that is really coming to the fore, and I would encourage you to seek out trials that might offer maintenance therapy.

Katherine Banwell:

Aaron sent in this question: “What are the most promising new effective drugs on the verge of being approved by the FDA, and what do they do?” 

Dr. Stein:

Yeah, so I’ll just mention the one I mentioned a second ago, and that’s the class of drugs called menin inhibitors. I wouldn’t quite say they’re on the verge of being approved by the FDA, but I think that they’re very, very powerful drugs that within the next two or three years, they will likely be approved by the FDA if the early clinical trials continue to pan out. And those are drugs that at least in the early experience, seem to be specific for patients with these NPM1 mutations or these MLL rearrangements. And your doctor will know what those are if you ask them, “Do I have an NPM1 mutation, or do I have an MLL rearrangement?” 

Katherine Banwell:

Thank you for that, Dr. Stein. And to our viewers, please continue to send in your questions to question@powerfulpatients.org, and we’ll work to get them answered on future programs.   

What advice do you have for patients to help them feel confident in speaking up and becoming a partner in their own care? 

Dr. Stein:

My advice is, speak up. You just speak up. It’s very important. It’s your – you know, at the end of the day, this is a disease that you are experiencing. Your doctor is there to partner with you and to guide you, but it’s your body. It’s your disease, and you need to be very vocal in what you’re experiencing and advocate for yourself.  

Katherine Banwell:

If a patient has difficulty voicing their questions or concerns, are there members of the support staff who could help?  

Dr. Stein:

Most centers have a social worker on staff that can help them out. I highly, highly encourage all of my patients to meet with a therapist or a psychologist that specializes in taking care of patients with cancer. I have become more vocal about this that I see. Really, it’s probably the best thing a patient can do for themselves, and there’s no downside. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to go back. Do one appointment and not go back. But that can be extremely helpful, extremely helpful.  

So, it’s important in both ways. You need to alert your doctor that you might be feeling one way, but I think it’s also on the doctor to sort of take visual cues from the patient when they see them to understand what they might need and to make those kind of recommendations.  

Katherine Banwell:

Yeah. As we close out our conversation, Dr. Stein, I wanted to get your take on the future of AML. What makes you hopeful?  

Dr. Stein:

Oh, so many things make me hopeful. I mean, we understand this disease so much more than we understood it even 10 years ago. There are all sorts of new treatments that are being developed. We’re improving the survival of our patients with the new treatments that have already been approved over the past 10 years. And I really think the golden age of AML treatment is upon us, and I really think that – and some people might think I’m crazy – but I really think that by the time I’m done with this, you know, one day, I’ll get too old, and I’ll decide I need to go retire and spend time with my family. But I think by that time, we’re going to be curing the vast majority of our patients. 

Katherine Banwell:

That’s so positive. It’s great to hear that there’s been so much advancement and that there’s so much hope out there for AML patients. I want to thank you so much for taking the time to join us today, Dr. Stein.  

Dr. Stein:

Okay, thank you. It was really nice to be here.   

Katherine Banwell:

And thank you to all of our collaborators. To learn more about AML and to access tools to help you become a proactive patient, visit powerfulpatients.org. I’m Katherine Banwell. Thanks for joining us today.