Tag Archive for: leukemia
How Can The CLL Society Help You?
How Can The CLL Society Help You? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.
Dr. Brian Koffman, co-founder of The CLL Society, explains its mission and goals. Dr. Koffman reviews programs and services that assist chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) patients and their loved ones.
Dr. Brian Koffman is the cofounder, chief medical officer, and executive vice president of The CLL Society.
See More From The Pro-Active CLL Patient Toolkit
Related Resources
|
|
|
Transcript:
Dr. Koffman:
Hi, I’m Dr. Brian Koffman. I’m a retired family doctor, and I’m the cofounder, chief medical officer, and executive vice president of the CLL Society. And, what, you ask, is the CLL Society? Well, the CLL Society is a 501(c)3 not-profit that focuses on the unmet needs of the CLL community in terms of supporting, educating, advocating on behalf of, and researching what needs to be done in the CLL community.
The CLL Society is very proud of the programs that we offer. So, among the programs that we offer, the backbone is a website that covers everything from the very basic kind of information – frequently asked questions – to really the latest research that’s coming out.
Also, on the website, CLLSociety.org, we have a whole toolbox, and in that toolbox, there are lists of acronyms. There are links to other CLL resources. There are links to CLL experts around the country. There are spreadsheets to help you with your lab sheet – lab results so you can follow them and mark the trans-Excel spreadsheet. We also do trial educational forums across the country with places like MD Anderson, Dana-Farber, or the National Institutes of Health.
And, we have 30-plus support groups in Canada and the USA that meet generally on a monthly basis, so there’s a peer-to-peer interaction, and we provide education to all of those. And, one of the programs that I’m most proud of is for patients who don’t have access to an expert. We provide free virtual consultations with CLL experts from the top institutions through a Zoom-type platform that’s HIPAA-compliant so patients can ask their questions to a remote expert, that expert reviews their medical records, and then to their local hematologist so they get the benefit of a consult that they wouldn’t otherwise.
Overwhelmed By a CLL Diagnosis? Key Steps to Take
Overwhelmed By a CLL Diagnosis? Key Steps to Take from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.
CLL advocate Dr. Brian Koffman, outlines key steps to take following a chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) diagnosis.
Dr. Brian Koffman is the cofounder, chief medical officer, and executive vice president of The CLL Society.
See More From The Path to CLL Empowerment
Related Resources
|
|
|
|
Transcript:
Dr. Koffman:
When somebody’s starting their CLL journey, there is some advice that I’d like to give people. The first is take your time. CLL rarely needs to be treated as soon as it’s diagnosed. You have time to learn about the disease, to familiarize yourself with the disease, and that learning is an iterative process.
You go over and over stuff, and eventually, this incredibly foreign language full of acronyms and medical talk becomes more familiar to you, and you feel more comfortable with it. But, it’s very overwhelming at first, but it’s not like some acute leukemias and other kinds of cancer, where they’re gonna see you on Tuesday and book the start of therapy on Friday. In CLL, that almost never happens. So, the first thing I would say is take a deep breath, under-react, and accept that you’ve got some time to make that decision.
The second strong piece of advice I would give people is to get an expert on your team. I can’t emphasize that enough. CLL is a rare cancer that the treatment paradigms have shifted radically in the last couple years, and they’re continuing to shift. And, if you’re not taking advantage of those changes – and, the research shows that in the community, patients are still too often getting inappropriate or less-than-optimum care compared to what’s happening in academic research centers.
You wanna get into their Rolodex file. You wanna be in their system so if a crisis happens three years down the line, you’re not a new patient trying to get an appointment. You have them in your system.
A third point that I’d make is to insist that you get appropriate testing before each and every treatment of your CLL. “Test before treat” is one of our mantras at the CLL Society because CLL tends to evolve over time, and not some – most, but not all of the prognostic and predictive factors can change over time, and those factors can be very influential in terms of saying, “This therapy will work, that therapy won’t work.” It’s critical that you know that, and if you knew it a year ago, it may be different now, so it’s critical to insist that your doctor do the appropriate predictive and prognostic testing.
We outline that on our website in our “test before treat” section in terms of what tests you need to have done. Take your time, get an expert, and get tested before treatment.
So, one of the questions I get asked is how can people learn more about CLL?
So, you can – some people like to learn online. CLLSociety.org has highly curated, medically reviewed articles that can help people from the beginning move forward. Leukemia and Lymphoma Society has useful resources on their website and has pamphlets that can help. Lymphoma Research Foundation is another. The Patient Empowerment Network offers you resources, listening to CLL experts and other CLL patients.
Going to support groups – you can often learn from other patients’ experiences. There’s nothing like meeting another patient and finding out what they’re like in that journey, especially if you’re two months into the journey and they’re 15-20 years into the journey. That can be incredibly helpful for you to see what their personal experience was in doing that. So, and also, there’s educational forums – for example, at the CLL Society, we have a dozen educational forums across the country every year – that give people an opportunity to learn from experts at places like the National Institutes of Health, Dana-Farber, MD Anderson, UCSD, and the Mayo Clinic.
So, we usually have one that isn’t far away from people to be able to go to if you wanna do your learning live.
Fact or Fiction? CLL Treatment & Side Effects
Fact or Fiction? CLL Treatment & Side Effects from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.
Are you confused about chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) treatment information? Dr. Javier Pinilla-Ibarz from Moffitt Cancer Center reviews current CLL treatments, emerging research and common side effects to help you decipher fact from fiction.
Dr. Javier Pinilla-Ibarz is Lymphoma Section Head and Director of Immunotherapy in the Malignant Hematology Department at H.Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute. Learn more about Dr. Pinilla-Ibarz here.
View The Fact or Fiction? CLL Treatment & Side Effects Resource Guide
Related Resources
|
|
|
|
Transcript:
Patricia Murphy:
Welcome to Fact or Fiction: CLL Treatment and side effects. First, let’s thank our partner, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Today, we’ll debunk common misconceptions about CLL treatment and side effects. That’s chronic lymphocytic leukemia. I’m Patricia Murphy, your host for today’s program. Joining me is Dr. Javier Pinilla. Thank you, Dr. Pinilla, for joining us. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Dr. Javier Pinilla:
How are you doing, Patricia? So, I am a hematology oncologist. I’m the head of the lymphoma program at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center. In my practice, in my clinic, I see mostly, almost 80%, 90% of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia.
Patricia Murphy:
Okay. Before we get started, just a note. This program is not a substitute for medical advice, so please refer to your medical care team with questions. Dr. Pinilla, give us a brief overview of how CLL and Leukemia are – chronic – CLL is currently treated. What are the options?
Dr. Javier Pinilla:
Well, right now, most of the time – in fact, it’s the most common scenario that we encounter on a weekly basis. Patients get diagnosed with leukemia. That is really a bad word for most of the patients, and they really come to our clinic as a very, very scared and anxious about the diagnosis. However, we don’t really treat most of them. Almost 70% of the patients don’t require therapy to start with, right? So, as you may know – and many, many people who really gonna watch this program will know that we really do active surveillance and watchful waiting.
For many, many months, sometimes years, and there is some specific criteria that patients need to really accomplish to really start therapy. What are those? Well, developing an anemia, low platelets, large lymph nodes that really produce some symptoms, B-cell symptoms like, you know, night sweats, drenching night sweats, fevers, weight loss, lack of appetite, and fatigue, and so on, right?
So, there is no doubt that there is reason why we need to treat. Regarding the treatment of this condition, well, we have been lucky because in the last, let’s say, seven, eight years, there has been a plethora and really large and new advances in the therapy for this condition. We went from the very old chemotherapy strategies in the oral form or even the intravenous form, chlorambucil, a very old drug, more than 50 years in the ways, through fludarabine, Cytoxan, even bendamustine. These last three were used in combination with what we call immunotherapy.
So, chemoimmunotherapy was very, very popular, let’s say, 10 years ago after the chlorambucil went away as a really not very optimal therapy. So, the main standard of therapy for CLL for many years in combination of chemo and immunotherapy with really good results. However, patients unfortunately in many situations will really relapse.
So, we always talk to the patient that when the times of therapy comes, we gonna really put the patient in remission in many cases. In some cases, it’s not really a full remission. It’s a partial remission. But this, most of the time, happen for a certain period of time upon after the patient will require a new therapy. That was kind of the dilemma and the things that we are being really experienced in for years.
However, the introduction of target therapy, that was really a revolution in CLL. That’s happened in many other cancers, including other leukemias, like a chronic myeloid leukemia. These new drugs really came to really change the paradigm, to really fix the duration of chemoimmunotherapy to really taking pills, we can really get a patient in a remission, or at least in a very good control of the disease for a longer period of time as soon as the patient continues to take the drug.
Obviously, we’re talking about BTK inhibitors that really, really extremely popular, and truly, today, a standard of care for any patient who has newly diagnosed CLL who requires therapy in any form, high risk, low risk, older, younger, with comorbid condition, without. This is very well reflected in NCCN guidelines with category 1, in this case, to the most common
the case I ready to try. So, we know that. We know that, and we really see patients who really enjoy these drugs for a long period of times. However, obviously, this always come with another issues, like intolerance, and in some other cases, progression, right?
So, it’s – BTK mutation has been described and has been seen in high-risk patients. So, this being the standard, and really, we enjoying this, but we have a very recent, last May, a new drug approved. It was already approved for patients who really failed other therapies but now also, we have the ability to get this drug as an initial therapy.
This therapy, in this case, is called a BCL-2 inhibitor. The name is venetoclax, in combination with another immunotherapy I mentioned before that was classically used with chemo. In this case, venetoclax, BCL-2 inhibitor, is combined with obinutuzumab, a drug with a very powerful anti-CD20 monoclonal antibody.
What really has brought us this new strategy? Well, it’s coming back that the paradigm, as mentioned before, changed from fixed duration with chemoimmunotherapy to long term durability for pills, but now, we have also the opportunity to discuss with patients the possibility to really offer them, in certain conditions, not for everyone – again, we need to really understand that we need to customize the therapy for patients, right?
But this new combination really, really will allow us to – many patients who don’t want to stay in therapy for life, so we can really offer back time-limited therapy with substituting the old chemotherapy by this drug called BCL-2 inhibitors, venetoclax. They work very similar to chemotherapy, and they are extremely effective, you know, cleaning or at least reducing, and sometimes completely eradicating most of the CLL cells in the bone marrow of patients with CLL.
However, we still no have longer follow-up in the front line. We have a longer follow up in the second line when patient has failed chemo or other drugs with these combination with venetoclax. In the front line, the data are very, very good, but the – it’s relatively short follow-up. So, patients receive care for a year, and they stop. So now, we are following those patients. There was a recent publication in the New England Journal that really described this population with this trial called CLL 14, but definitely, we need to really continue to see how these data evolve as we have seen with a routine for many years.
We have already seven years follow up on ibrutinib, and it’s something that keep going, and this is what is gonna help us to understand who and what can really be given these kind of therapies, okay?
Patricia Murphy:
It sounds like we have made tremendous progress with CLL. What kind of clinical trials should patients be investigating? What are they – what’s out there?
Dr. Javier Pinilla:
Well, there is no doubt that a lot of people until now were really looking for venetoclax front line clinical trials. Now it’s available in the clinical practice. However, we’re still trying to figure out combination of drugs, right? For example, in this case, I have mentioned we have a very good drug like ibrutinib in front line. We have all the BTK inhibitors that are coming up such as acalabrutinib. We have other PI3K inhibitors that are being not very successful in the front line, right to the second line, like idelalisib, duvelisib, even copanlisib.
And other drugs, like I said, ibrutinib. So, we have a plethora of drugs, really available as clinical trial outside the ones that have approved. However, one of the things that we are really starting to explore in the recent year is how we combine all these mechanisms of action. The most typical combination that we are really now under trial is the combination of two or three drugs, as happens in many other forms of cancer.
So, this combination of these three – some of, two or three of these drugs, is very, very well studied now in an integral trial, the ECOG, the alliance trial, we gonna start to see those trials, and of course, our patients in front line will have the opportunity. Besides that, we gonna see more and more trials are going to combine patients who are already in chronic therapy with ibrutinib with a second drug, with the goal to in the future be able to discontinue therapy because it’s one of the issues that ibrutinib has these days. Patient takes the drug for life.
Patricia Murphy:
What are the things that you’re thinking about when you’re considering treatment for your patients, when you’re making those decisions?
Dr. Javier Pinilla:
Well, I think it’s important to really notice and to really understand my patient, is that we need to provide education. We need to provide education, and obviously, every – many, many patients ask me, “Doctor, what I should do?” Right?
But I think it’s very important for me to understand what is the goals of every patient, right? Age, comorbid condition, way of life, people like to travel versus staying in the same place. So, I try to really educate about the options because we are very lucky that we have multiple options. We also understand – so, what is gonna be the difficulty is to really get therapy A versus therapy B and how much control or monitoring they require, and finally also, as mentioned before, to try to customize therapies for different patients.
I always say that – we discuss in the beginning that not everyone with CLL requires therapy at the beginning. However, when people require therapy, not everyone requires therapy for the same reason. Some people may require therapy because they are anemic, okay, extreme anemia. Why? Because their bone marrow cannot really produce enough red cells or even platelets. Why? Because they is full of CLL cells.
So, those patients in my opinion, they can really do very well with strategies as BCL-2 inhibitor in combination and alone. Why? Because these drugs is able to truly and very, very efficaciously really eliminate the CLL.
So, we go into another scenario. Patient with very high, bulky lymph nodes in the neck, axillary and abdominal, for example, with enlarged spleen who may have very, very severe B-cell symptoms. We note that we cannot apply anything. There’s no doubt that introduction of Bruton’s tyrosine kinase inhibitor or even – is extremely successful in reducing the symptomatology very fast and shrinking the lymph nodes in a very short period of time. So, again, I would say that it’s black and blue or like a black and white and – different.
Patricia Murphy:
Black and white.
Dr. Javier Pinilla:
Black and white. Thank you. So, but the truth is different patients may require different strategies, and obviously, patients’ preference are really, really important.
Patient may come back to be in therapy for life, maybe patient maybe don’t care. Patient may really, really, really want specifically shorter therapy. So, I think we need to really understand that in the options and start to work with them, also depending on the presentation on the needs for therapy.
Patricia Murphy:
Yeah, yeah. Let’s talk a little bit about molecular testing for a moment. What can you learn from molecular testing? When will that –
Dr. Javier Pinilla:
Yeah, molecular testing is quite important. I think that there’s different tests that we really perform, right? NCCN guidelines, iwCLL, has really, really laid out the fundamental tests that we need to provide, or we need to really do at least – they say “at least” when the patient requires therapy. Why? Because obviously, it’s gonna be an important part of how we are going to see the patient and how the patient is going to behave, even during therapy.
So, we are discussing about obviously FISH tests, FISH tests, that’s a chromosomal analysis that is very, very classical and has been done for years for classical chromosome abnormalities, 11q, 17p, that is the bad, always what you think that is the bad one. It’s true that it may even, with the new therapies, has shorter period of responses, 13q, trisomy 12. So, we set out with this one.
Besides that, what is the other important thing? The mutation status of the heavy chains in the immunoglobin, the IGHV mutation status. Very, very important because even when the new therapies made no difference, while we know patient with unmutated immunoglobulin may really have different outcomes in the long run. The truth is that with ibrutinib, for example, or venetoclax, we don’t see the difference in outcomes, but still we need to see what’s happening in the long run. So, the good news is that with the new therapies, we don’t see difference that we used to see with chemotherapy that unmutated immunoglobulin patients, they may really fail more often than mutated ones.
However, I think it’s something important that we need to implement. Last, but not least, is the TP53 mutations. I think it’s something that it should be implemented, and I think the teaching point is that TP53 mutations, maybe also NOTCH1 or SF3B1 – other mutations that may really give to patients a bad outcome in the long run, at least with the chemoimmunotherapy, it’s something that also can be done, or at least it’s something that will be important to really incorporate to our patients. Not in all the cases, but in some, TP53 for sure.
Patricia Murphy:
Let’s play a little fact or fiction game. I’ll tell you some of the things we have heard from patients with CLL, and you can tell me if it’s fact or fiction.
Dr. Javier Pinilla:
Sure, absolutely.
Patricia Murphy:
Here we go. First one. And I think we’ve already solved this, but I’ll just say it’s a concern of patients. “You have to treat CLL right away.”
Dr. Javier Pinilla:
That’s not true, as I mentioned before, and I tell you, most of the patients will really come really scared into our work clinics and with a very high anxiety levels do not require therapy. So, I think it’s important. So, it’s very specific research. So, most of the people are – many people think that because their white blood counts continue to raise, this is the criteria for therapy, while it’s a very specific reasons of doubling time, but really, really relatively rare.
So, it’s relatively rare to be – need therapy for count or high count. And most of the people has high blood counts, they don’t feel it. Besides that, I think the emphasis is that if the patient needs therapy, well then, they need therapy. But they already anticipate that.
Patricia Murphy:
Yeah. Okay, here’s another one. “Watch and wait can go on for years, and I may never need treatment.”
Dr. Javier Pinilla:
You’re right. So, there is a special population of patients, mainly with certain characteristics such as, for example, 13q by FISH, 13q deletion by FISH, and IGHV mutation in heavy chain immunoglobulin, those groups of patients that is the classical ones that not all of them, but some group of them, may never require therapy, and there is patients in my practice that have been followed for years and years, 10, 15, or even 20.
Patricia Murphy:
Man, that’s very interesting. How about this one? “Chemotherapy is the only available approach. One size fits all when it comes to treatment options.”
Dr. Javier Pinilla:
Well, as I mentioned before, at length it’s not really chemotherapy. I wouldn’t say that chemotherapy is not an option these days, but however, with introduction of the new therapies, I think it’s moving away. It’s moving away to the therapy for CLL patients. And I think – I have to admit that we really, with the incorporation of these time limited therapies that I discussed before, chemoimmunotherapy is using less and less.
In the community, maybe because the incorporation of the new drugs it takes longer, it still may be used, and they may be used, but definitely in academic institution, I can tell you for sure, chemoimmunotherapy is almost gone.
Patricia Murphy:
That’s a great point about community care. That’s a great point. So, as a patient, I may be able to look into more therapies if I ask my doctor, perhaps?
Dr. Javier Pinilla:
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I think many doctors in the community and academic institution, they know that, but obviously, I think patient with CLL need to understand that there’s multiple options today, right? And another thing that you said, that chemoimmunotherapy is the only option, it is not really the right answer for our patients, right? There is no doubt it is an option, but there’s many others that need to be discussed with our patients to see how we gonna fit those different therapies for a specific patient as was mentioned, try to customize it, try to really adopt the different goals and really, really, outcomes for each individual patient.
Patricia Murphy:
Yeah, I think we tackled this one a bit, but it’s probably worth mentioning again. How about this one? “I have to take inhibitor therapies forever.”
Dr. Javier Pinilla:
Forever. That’s right. BTK inhibitor, I mentioned before, and mostly – all the BTK inhibitors, even the PI3K gamma inhibitors that they are proving second line now, they are being described – or they are being studied that they are taking anti-disease progression, or an acceptable toxicity, right? So, that’s the reason. So, maybe we’d say, “Well, on remission. Can I stop therapy?” Well, we do not recommend that because the data that we have from the clinical trials, patients continue therapy. And we note, as far as patient continue therapy, patient gonna do well.
So, the question is, what happens if you stop therapy? Well, we know that some patients may really have a relapse very, very fast, we call flare, classically happening in the lymph nodes – tumor flare – while other patients may really take longer to really have relapse.
[00:37:10]
So, we cannot – it’s very, very hard to really advise, and it’s something I do not advise, to stop therapy because we don’t know how the patient’s gonna really behave. However, there’s no doubt in certain situation when patient may have toxicity, chronic toxicity, patient may discontinue the drug. Some of these patients, they have been switched to another strategy, or some of them decide to say, “Okay, doctor, leave me alone. I wanna recover, and then after that, we’ll see if I really want to get in something else or I want to wait until my disease come back.” So, some take different strategies.
Patricia Murphy:
All right, one more. “It doesn’t matter if I miss one dose of oral therapy.”
Dr. Javier Pinilla:
Well, there is no doubt that the compliance is always a big issue on chronic therapies, oral therapies, and we really emphasize the importance to really, you know, give these drugs in a daily basis as being prescribed.
No doubt that there’s two issues here, the financial toxicity, the fact that some patients may really have a very high copayment, so they may want to skip doses to save money. That’s really, really unfortunate, but happen, right? The second one, obviously, is people who may really have significant side effects of the drug and may not want to retake the drug.
So, I think these things that need to be discussed with the providers, with doctors, to see how better we can really manage these situations. Let’s say an intolerance, maybe adjusting the dose, dose reduction. In financial toxicity, it’s a challenge, right? We try to help our patients, multiple foundations, Leukemia Lymphoma, many others, but I have to really say, sometimes this may not happen. So, it’s one of the big frustrations in some patients and doctors when we encounter this situation.
Patricia Murphy:
It really stresses the importance of a doctor-patient relationship.
Dr. Javier Pinilla:
Absolutely, absolutely. But once again, I think we always discuss about compliance. I think compliance is very, very important for the success of any therapy, so we definitely support the fact that patients should really take the drug as prescribed.
Patricia Murphy:
Totally. What else do you hear from patients? Anything that you hear that you feel like you have to bust some myths about when you’re talking with your patients?
Dr. Javier Pinilla:
Well, as you can imagine, in the – doing the phase of active surveillance, and because patient is really quite scared, they looking for any alternative medications or even therapies that they are out there that they think are gonna save their lives, right?
And although I quite liberal with things, we always pay attention to some of these things that are likely to really have any effect and sometimes may be deleterious for the health of patients, so I always really make them aware that there’s very, very few things that are being tested, and there’s not much evidence that any of the alternative medicines that we have really out there can have any influence.
Everyone referred to the green tea extracts as something that is being described in the literature with curcumin, so these the couple of things that we may really give to our patient as a way to feel that they are doing something because I think it’s the frustration of the patient that they have to wait. They are in surveillance, but they are not doing nothing.
However, my best advice to my patient is to really try to really get in a very good and healthy lifestyle, right? To really prove, you know, nutrition in the ways that everyone knows but very few people does, exercise as possible, and try to really keep themselves as healthy as possible because we know that there’s other things that can happen, for example, infection is another thing that may also really, really complicate the active surveillance strategies that we really recommend.
Patricia Murphy:
Right, right. What about clinical trials? Do you hear misconceptions from your patients around enrolling in clinical trials?
Dr. Javier Pinilla:
For sure. For sure. It’s very, very classical. People always – many patients, unfortunately, they think a clinical trial is an experimental drug that has never been proven in patients. And although it could be true, most of the time, they are a drug who has a very, very important background. They have an important, you know, scientific evidence why we try them. It’s true on phase one trials, they really are tested for toxicity. Phase two trials, it’s for somewhat efficacy. However, I think we need to discuss specific basis what kind of trial.
Another important misconception is most of the people think they really gonna get placebo. The famous placebo versus drug issue. It’s very rare to see placebo trials in oncology, right? Most of the patients, what they’ve been randomized, another kind of bad word for patients. “Oh, I been – I gonna be randomized in the placebo.”
Well, No. 1, placebo arm is very rare, and the randomization is standard of care versus something that we believe gonna improve the standard of care. Let’s say ibrutinib in comparison with ibrutinib plus something else, okay? Something else, okay?
Patricia Murphy:
Yeah, yeah. Let’s talk a little bit about side effects. You mentioned before that sometimes it’s hard to get patients to comply long term with treatment. What kind of things are they dealing with?
Dr. Javier Pinilla:
So, there is many, many side effects, completely different depending on the drugs, right? So, every drug, as you can imagine, has different side effects. Obviously, the side effects that we discussing these days are the ones in relations to the patients who really have chronic therapies, right?
So, we talking about the BTK inhibitors, specifically ibrutinib. We know some of these patients may have a continuous bruising or really even rashes in the skin. Diarrhea may happen in the beginning. They, for example, may have issues with blood pressure, may have multiple issues that fatigue, joint pains, bone pains, polyarticular arthralgias. So, all of these things that some of them they are acute. Obviously, we’re talking about arrhythmias of the heart, the atrial fibrillation, that may need to be taken care of by cardiology consultation. However, there’s another things that are annoyance. I would discuss, right?
Annoyance that the long run may really affect quality of life on our patient, and obviously, it’s important to really have a really good and honest conversation with – between patient and doctors to see how we can really provide these. I mentioned those reductions or even switching drugs, sometimes is also appropriate in situations where we cannot really fix the problem with those reductions.
Patricia Murphy:
It sounds like these side effects, while challenging for patients, can be managed with medications. Are there ways to manage these side effects?
Dr. Javier Pinilla:
Sometimes. Sometimes, they can be managed through certain medications. Sometimes they are chronic, and we cannot do nothing about. It’s the reason the dose reduction maybe is the best thing.
Patricia Murphy:
Yeah, yeah. Okay, here’s another fact or fiction game we can play about side effects. “There is nothing that can be done for my side effects,” and we kinda talked about this. “What about fatigue? What can I do about my fatigue?”
Dr. Javier Pinilla:
That’s actually a problem, a problematic one. I think – one of the things that I discuss with my patients sometimes, inpatients and other populations of patients with other comorbid conditions, sometimes, and I don’t say that always, fatigue can really be produced by multiple things. So, we always also emphasize the fact that they need to be seen by private physician to make sure there is no other issues concerning the fatigue, classical in diabetic patients. Something in other patients with other cardiac conditions, right?
However, the truth is that fatigue is one of the main issues in CLL, sometimes happening before therapy or after therapy, with or without according continuous therapy. So, maybe fatigue is one of the big ones and is one of the ones that we really, really hear from our patients very, very often. We may really, as mentioned before, trying to do an adjustment of the doses, but in times of management, that I would say is a challenging one.
Patricia Murphy:
It’s a tricky one. Sure. How about this one? “There’s an increased risk of secondary cancer and skin cancer from chemo.”
Dr. Javier Pinilla:
Well, secondary cancer is something that we see very commonly in patients with CLL. So, CLL by themself with no therapy can really predispose patients to have high incidence of secondary cancer. We know this for a long time. How chemotherapy or even the new strategies such as BTK inhibitors or monoclonal antibodies or even – can’t really change that. We don’t know.
What we know is that our patients live longer with these new strategies. So, the question is, one of the hypotheses could be that those patients, because they live longer, they have more chances to develop cancer. Skin cancer is extremely common in CLL patients, very, very common. And always the argument is that, “Well, maybe the immunosuppression due to the leukemia condition, maybe they predisposed to that. The question is, how drugs really eradicate or control a disease can affect this incidence. That’s something that we don’t know.
There’s some anecdotal evidence that some patients, after getting certain therapies, may really have more of this skin cancer. Other patients do better. Still, it’s hard to really generalize.
Patricia Murphy:
Sure. This one kinda gets back to the doctor-patient relationship. “I shouldn’t bother my team with side effects.”
Dr. Javier Pinilla:
Well, obviously there’s a reason we follow patients. We follow patients on a regular basis to really see how they’re doing, what kind of side effects they have, what they are doing. I was mentioning that with fatigue, we may not do much.
Some cases when the patient has with arthritic inflammation of the joints, that we have seen, well, steroids may – for a short period of time – may work. Obviously, oral pains, we still can really prescribe some Tylenol or things that can really improve that pain. For the diarrhea, many things to do. For the cramps for example also, we CoQ10, a calcium supplement, so it’s always seems that we can really introduce, obviously, for the nausea, something easily to treat.
So, I think the best thing is to really have the regular visit with the doctor and discuss. I always really tell my patients always, write it on a piece of paper the things that they need to ask because many, many times, with the rush of the clinics, patients really forget about the really important thing what they come in for.
Patricia Murphy:
Right. Right, and great idea to write down your questions. How about this one? “Natural supplements help with side effects.”
Dr. Javier Pinilla:
Well, at least what I can tell you in my opinion, there is no data about that. There is no doubt that – it depends on what kind of natural supplement. I may really allow my patient, if I see there is not really a potential toxicity to try, and no doubt that they have some benefit.
Patricia Murphy:
Okay, well we’ve talked about a lot of treatment and side effects and myths. As an informed patient, I may want to go out on the internet and find out all I can about CLL. What should I be looking for? What should I be careful about when it comes to online awareness and health literacy?
Dr. Javier Pinilla:
Very, very important topic that I love to really discuss with my patients. I always say that some patients kind of intoxicate themselves with multiple websites and with different backgrounds.
I think we – I do recommend them to really go to the websites, to the websites who really provide a very fair and really clean and important information. I would definitely – we were discussing about the Leukemia Lymphoma Society, CLL Society, Patient Power, to really – National Cancer Institute’s website, places that they have very well filtered information that we can really give to the patient. There is no doubt there’s many others not in this list, but I think we always have to be aware that there’s other websites that may not really provide really, really a good information or may really confuse our patients. So, I like to always really go to the sources that I really trust the most.
Patricia Murphy:
Yeah, so reputable sources and always checking with your doctor, obviously, about things that you’re considering.
Dr. Javier Pinilla:
Absolutely. Absolutely. I always tell to my patients, “You go there, you look at that, you read, but then after that you have a question. Come because sometimes you may have misconceptions.”
Patricia Murphy:
Okay. Cancer treatment is always progressing. How hopeful are you about future treatments for CLL?
Dr. Javier Pinilla:
Very, very much. I think we have been seeing tremendous progress in the last 10 years, and I think we gonna continue to go in this direction. I think there’s many more drugs that are coming down the pipeline in the clinical trials. Even we have drugs for patients who has resistance to, you know, BTK mutations.
Maybe in the future, we gonna see with people who really fail, BCL-2 inhibitors in the different ways. I think CAR-T cell technologies, CAR-T cell therapies, also they are coming to CLL to more advanced phases to people who already fail multiple lines of new therapies. So, I am very, very hopeful about how the future really comes, in terms of new therapeutical opportunities for our patients with CLL.
Patricia Murphy:
Dr. Javier Pinilla, so great to talk to you. Thank you very much for joining us today.
Dr. Javier Pinilla:
You’re very welcome. Thank you so much.
Patricia Murphy:
And thank you to all of our partners. To learn more about CLL and access tools to help you become a proactive patient, visit www.powerfulpatients.org.
How Can Patients Learn About Developing CLL Research?
How Can Patients Learn About Developing CLL Research? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.
Dr. Danielle Brander explains why it’s important for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) patients to stay up-to-date on developing research and treatment news. Dr. Brander also shares resources for learning more about clinical studies.
Dr. Danielle Brander is Director of the CLL and Lymphoma Clinical Research Program at Duke Cancer Institute. Learn more about Dr. Brander here.
See More From the Path to CLL Empowerment
Related Programs
CLL Genetic Tests: How Do Results Impact Treatment and Care? |
|
|
Transcript:
Dr. Brander:
I think it’s very important that patients and their caregivers stay informed and advised of opportunities to participate in ongoing research. I think there’s a misconception that with all the favorable progress in treatment options available for CLL, that there’s no longer the need for clinical research participation.
Though, there are a lot of novel options available for CLL, there’s still a lot of ways that we can improve care for patients. That is, there are trials with the next-generation inhibitors or for patients traditionally with harder to treat CLL or may become resistant to the novel agents, there’s a lot of trials looking into how do you combine the novel agents to give patients the best options. And then a lot of the research, too, are not just in the treatments.
But as our science advances into looking at other markers of the CLL cells, or what we call the depth of response, how much CLL you kill with the treatments and how low of a level we can get in terms of detection. This may result in a situation where patients have the opportunity to receive novel treatments, have a really good response, and then potentially stop the treatments and be followed off of therapies, so have the benefit of novel treatment but not with having to go on an ongoing drug forever and ever.
When I talk to a patient about opportunities for clinical trials, I’m really focused on the patient in front of me. That is, I wouldn’t offer or talk about a trial if I didn’t think it potentially could benefit the patient in front of me.
And again, though we’ve had a lot of advances in treatment options, there are certainly a lot of ways that we can engage and hopefully help patients moving forward. There’s been recent studies across all cancers showing that unfortunately a very low percent of patients are offered and enrolled and participating in clinical research studies, and I think it’s really important that patients know there’s a lot of opportunities out there that potentially could benefit them.
The different ways to be advised and informed, again, are some of the resources online educationally for CLL and lymphoma that often post about different sites for clinical trials. There’s a clinical trials.gov web site that all sites in the United States that are enrolling trials with patients have to log clinical trials, and though that has to be updated, it often can be a good beginning site.
But in the end, hopefully the best resource is your treatment team, your oncologist, and your other team that can help point you to what trials might be eligible for you, either at the location where you are or close by.
The last part I’ll point out is though we focus a lot on the treatment clinical trials, in CLL, where patients don’t always need treatment right away or may have treatment and have a response and then have a long period of time afterward, is that many centers are helping to engage patients in research that is not necessarily done during the time of their treatment. Again, to try to understand why some patients have a longer course until they require treatment, or why they might have responded differently, or other ways we can improve their care.
What Is the Impact of Cytogenetics on AML Care?
What Is the Impact of Cytogenetics on AML Care? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.
Understanding the cytogenetics of your acute myeloid leukemia (AML) can help determine which treatment option might be best for you. Registered nurse Mayra Lee defines this complex term and the role it plays in AML care.
Mayra Lee, RN, is an outpatient clinic nurse at Moffitt Cancer Center. Learn more about Mayra Lee.
Related Resources
Why Cytogenetics and Molecular Profiling Necessary for AML Patients |
|
Predictive (Familial) Genetic Testing vs. Cancer Genetic Testing: What’s the Difference? |
Transcript:
Cytogenetics would be the term that I would say patients are unaware of and don’t understand it quite often. It’s probably the first time you hear it when you come and sit down and we talk about the disease because the first thing you want to know is what is my prognosis and what is the treatment. Well, a lot of that is made through the cytogenetics of the disease.
We use these terms and we don’t often explain what all of that means. And what that means is that the disease itself has chromosomes, has mutations, has genetic information that will help us determine which treatment is a better option for you or is there a genetic mutation that you perhaps have that we now have medications that are used to treat that genetic mutation as a said just a few seconds ago. Like for the three, if you have that mutation, we now have medication to treat that where we didn’t have that five years ago or even four years ago.
So, that terminology of cytogenetic and biomarkers are very new. They’re not something that the general public knows or understands very well.
But when you come to academic centers like where I’m at right now that is all we’re going to talk to you about because we want to do personalized medicine. And personalized medicine means what is it that your disease looks like because your disease does not look like the other AML patients. Your disease is your disease and it looks different and it’s going to behave differently. And so, we want to know about those mutations. So, so much of your treatment, so much of the prognosis is so closely linked to that that I think it’s an important thing to know. It’s important to understand it. It’s important to ask. It’s important to pause your doctor and your nurses and say, “I don’t understand what you mean by that. What does that word mean? Can you explain that to me?”
AML Genetic Testing: Could It Lead to a Targeted Treatment for You?
AML Genetic Testing: Could It Lead to a Targeted Treatment for You? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.
AML expert, Dr. Pinkal Desai, outlines the reasoning behind the necessity of cytogenetics and molecular testing when managing an AML diagnosis. Want to Learn More? Download Your AML Navigator Resource Guide, here.
Dr. Pinkal Desai is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College and Assistant Attending Physician at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital. More about this expert here.
Related Resources
|
|
|
|
Transcript:
Dr. Pinkal Desai:
So for patients who are undergoing molecular testing or any diagnosis of AML, both cytogenetics and molecular profiling are important, so they do not supersede each other. This is the conglomerate information that we need from the diagnosis to make important medical decisions. Usually the diagnosis would include: looking at the cells under the microscope by the pathologist; flow cytometry, which is a way to identify the subtype of leukemia; chromosomes or karyotypic analysis, which is to look at the individual chromosomes and whether they are abnormal in these leukemia cells; and the last one would be the molecular mutations, which would be single-gene profiling of the leukemia cells.
All of these are important, and it’s not that one can be omitted. They’re all part and parcel of the diagnosis of AML, and all of them should be done.
So my advice to patients whenever this topic comes up of molecular mutations is always an unequivocal – there should be no question that this should not be done. The advice is plain and simple. This has to be done at diagnosis and, in certain cases, at relapse as well in order to figure out the best treatment possible. If they’re at a site or a clinic where this molecular testing is not available, then they should seek a second opinion to a site that would do this testing because in this day and age of leukemia, there is no treatment and diagnosis that can be done without all of these components in place.
In the old days, we didn’t have a lot of treatment in AML. It was either chemotherapy or hypomethylating agents, and that’s it. But now we have several drugs, five or six of them, that were just approved in the past two years specifically for leukemia and targeting some of these mutations. We have Midostaurin, Gilteritinib, Ivosidenib, Enasidenib, and I don’t want to go on and on about these drugs, but the most important thing is that in this day and age where you have so many drugs, how to incorporate these drugs into the management for patients, both upfront and in the relapse setting, it’s extremely relevant to do this testing, and this is highly encouraged and should be done as part of the diagnosis and treatment.
What’s Next in AML Treatment and Research?
What’s Next in AML Treatment and Research? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.
Dr. Pinkal Desai, an AML specialist, discusses research in-progress on MRD testing and pre-disease mutations in leukemia.
Dr. Pinkal Desai is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College and Assistant Attending Physician at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital. More about this expert here.
Related Resources
|
|
|
|
Subscribe to stay up-to-date in the latest information in AML treatment and research
Transcript:
Dr. Pinkal Desai:
So we at Weill Cornell are a big leukemia center, and we are leading a lot of the clinical trials in AML, both in the upfront and the relapse setting. There are several research initiatives that we are highly interested in. One of them is how to incorporate some of these targeted treatments, both in the upfront and in the relapse setting.
The most important one that we’re actively working on is to monitor these patients, so MRD testing, or minimal residual testing, is extremely relevant in order to figure out whether the treatments are working in the right fashion, and would you change treatment or would it impact the patient’s overall survival if some of these mutations persist or not.
And we are really interested in monitoring these patients and these mutations to figure out a plan which is targeted not only for the mutation but also for the specific patient, and that is one of the things that we are very interested in and doing at Cornell.
We’re also looking at pre-disease mutations. There are several mutations – this is personally my research interest as well – there are certain people who are at risk of developing leukemia; for example, people who are undergoing chemotherapy for other cancers, and the presence of some of these mutations before the diagnosis of leukemia would highly be relevant because if we’re monitoring some of these people and figuring out who can develop this leukemia and can you do something about it, so this is sort of more on the prevention aspect of leukemia or secondary leukemia, which is also something we are interested in at Cornell and ongoing research is for us.
But the most important things is obviously for patients who actually have the diagnosis of AML, the best available agents as part of clinical trials, the best way to monitor them and design treatments so that we can achieve the best possible results for the patient is what we are striving for at Cornell, and it would be extremely helpful for patients to enroll into these trials and contribute both to their own treatment outcomes and also to the AML community at large.
Facing Acute Myeloid Leukemia: Notes from a Survivor
In the spring of 2016, I was looking forward to a final year of teaching sociology before a retirement promising new adventures. I felt great and had no reason to think I had any health problems. When my doctor suggested some routine blood work, I readily complied. When the results showed abnormally low white blood cell counts and he recommended a hematologist, I readily complied. When the hematologist ordered a bone marrow biopsy, I still readily complied. When the results came in, my life changed forever.
The biopsy revealed that I had acute myeloid leukemia. Since this disease can kill within months, they recommended immediate treatment. The next day I checked into a hospital and started chemotherapy. I received the standard treatment for this disease for the preceding 40 years: a “7 + 3” cocktail of cytarabine and idarubicin. I spent five and a half weeks in the hospital dealing with various infections brought on by immunosuppression and patiently waiting for my blood counts to recover. As they did, I received the best possible news. The chemotherapy had achieved a temporary remission that bought me time to explore my options for longer term treatment.
As I awaited the molecular and cytogenic data on my cancer, I was told to expect two possibilities. If there was a relatively low risk of relapse, I might get by with additional chemotherapy. If there was a high risk of relapse, a stem cell transplant was in order. When the results placed me in an intermediate risk category, I had a tough choice to make. After researching my options, getting second opinions, gathering advice, and reading my doctor’s cues, I settled on the transplant. My logic was that if I opted for more chemo and it didn’t work out, I would deeply regret not having the transplant. If I had the transplant and it didn’t work out, at least I would feel as if I gave it my best shot and it just wasn’t meant to be. Despite the 15-20% mortality rate from the transplant itself, I was at peace with my decision to proceed.
My benefactors were two anonymous sets of parents who had donated their newborn infants’ umbilical cords to a transplant bank. Once we found two good matches, the cords were shipped to my transplant hospital, the cord blood was extracted, and it was transfused into my bloodstream. These stem cells just “knew” where to go to engraft in my bone marrow and begin producing a healthy new immune system. For the second time, I received the best possible news. Three weeks after transplant, one of my donor’s cells were 99% engrafted. With that result, I returned home for a prolonged recovery.
For the next few weeks, I faced daily clinic visits, blood tests, transfusions of platelets and red blood cells, growth factor injections, and lingering effects of my conditioning chemotherapy and radiation as well as the engraftment process itself. As the weeks turned into months, my recovery proceeded apace. It eventually became clear that I could claim the best possible news for the third time, as my new cells and old body got along with each other and there was no evidence of graft-vs.-host disease. Looking back over the entire process, my oncologist summarized it by saying “this is as good as it gets.”
Many people wanted to give me credit for surviving this disease. While it is tempting to claim such credit, I remain agnostic about whether anything I did had a material effect on my positive outcome. I think my survival was largely a matter of luck, chance, and random variation across AML patients. Nonetheless, there were several practices I engaged in throughout my treatment that deserve mention. At the very least, they brought me peace during a difficult time. And at the most, they may indeed have contributed to a positive outcome for which I am eternally grateful.
The first set of practices that sustained me was mindfulness, meditation and yoga. To the greatest extent possible, these practices helped me let go of ruminations about the past or fears about the future and focus on the present moment. Focusing on my breathing kept me centered as – like my breaths – each moment flowed into the next. Maintaining a non-judgmental awareness and acceptance of each passing moment kept my psyche on an even keel.
Rather than extended periods of formal meditation, I simply sought a mindful awareness of each moment, hour, day and week. I also went through a daily yoga routine even while receiving chemotherapy. Doing so helped me retain my identity as I weathered the toxic treatment and its inevitable side-effects. In the evenings, I used a technique called a body scan to relax and prepare me for a peaceful sleep. The cumulative effect of these practices was a calm acceptance of circumstances I could not change alongside a serene hope that all would work out for the best.
A second practice involved being a proactive patient. Perhaps it was my training as a social scientist that allowed me to bring an analytical curiosity to my disease and the treatments my doctors were deploying. I asked lots of questions during their all too brief visits, and they patiently responded to all my queries.
On several occasions, my proactive stance made a positive contribution to my treatment. When I developed a nasty, full body rash, it took a collaborative conversation between me, my oncologist, and infectious disease doctors to isolate the one drug among so many that was the culprit. I identified it, they switched it out, and the rash abated. On another occasion, I was able to identify two drugs that were causing an unpleasant interaction effect. I suggested changing the dosing schedule, they concurred, and the problem resolved. The sense of efficacy I received from this proactive stance also helped me retain a positive mood and hopeful stance during my prolonged treatment.
A third practice involved maintaining a regimen of physical activity. During my first, five-week hospital stay, I felt compelled to move and get out of my room for both physical and social reasons. I developed a routine of walking the halls three times a day, trailing my IV pole behind me. They tell me I was walking roughly 5 miles a day, and every excursion felt like it was keeping my disease at bay and connecting me with all the nurses and staff members I would encounter as I made my rounds.
When I moved to my transplant hospital, I was confined to my room but requested a treadmill that met the physical need for activity even as I sacrificed the social benefits of roaming the halls. But throughout both hospital stays and later at home, I maintained stretching activities, exercise workouts, physical therapy routines, and yoga to keep my body as active and engaged as my circumstances would allow. These activities also gave me a welcome sense of efficacy and control.
A fourth practice involved maintaining my sense of humor. I have always appreciated a wide variety of humor, ranging from bad jokes, puns and double entendre to witty anecdotes and stories to philosophical musings. Cancer is anything buy funny, which is precisely why humor has the power to break through the somber mood and fatalistic worldview that so often accompanies the disease. Using humor became another way of keeping the cancer at bay. It was a way of saying you may make me sick and eventually kill me, but I’m still going to enjoy a good laugh and a bad joke along the way.
Alongside these practices I could control, there were also beneficial circumstances beyond my control that worked in my favor. These included the privilege of being a well-educated white male that led to my being treated respectfully and taken seriously by all my health care providers. In addition, my doctors and nurses consistently combined skill and expertise with compassion and empathy in ways I will never forget or could ever repay. And finally, my privileged status and excellent care played out against a backdrop of strong social support from a dense network of family, friends, colleagues and neighbors.
A final practice that integrated everything else was writing my story as it unfolded. Upon my first hospitalization, I began sending emails to an ever-expanding group of recipients documenting and reflecting upon my disease, treatment and recovery. Narrating my story for others required me to make sense of it for myself. The ostensible goal of keeping others informed became a powerful therapeutic prod for my own understanding of what was going on around me and to me. While my doctors’ ministrations cured my body, my writing preserved my sense of self and a coherent identity.
I eventually sent over 60 lengthy reports to a group of roughly 50 recipients over a 16-month period. This writing would eventually serve three purposes. It was a sense-making procedure for me. It was a communication vehicle with my correspondents. And finally, I realized it could be a resource for others in the broader cancer community. With that insight, I did some additional writing about lessons learned and identity transformations and published the resulting account.
As I mentioned at the start, I will never know if any of these practices or circumstances made a material contribution to my survival. But they maintained my sanity and preserved my identity during the most challenging experience of my life. Regardless of the eventual endings of our journeys, sustaining and nurturing ourselves along the way is a worthy goal in itself.
Steve Buechler is the author of “How Steve Became Ralph: A Cancer/Stem Cell Odyssey (with Jokes),” which was recently selected as an inspirational “Suggested Reading” by the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. He recently recorded a 5-part webcast series that expands on his recovery story here. Steve’s numerous blog posts, video presentations, and more may be found at www.stevebuechlerauthor.com and he is on Facebook at SteveBuechlerAuthor.
Coping With the Emotional Side Effects of AML
A dynamic panel discusses the important aspects of care for AML patients, with a focus on the emotional side effects, research on new treatments underway and finding suitable clinical trials.
Coping With the Emotional Side Effects of AML from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.
Transcript:
Beth Probert:
Hello, I’m Beth Probert, and I am a patient advocated and ambassador with Patient Power.
I am also an MPN patient. Thanks for joining us for this Patient Empowerment Program in partnership with The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Today, our program is: Coping with the Emotional Side-Effects of AML. And we are joining our AML community.
We’re gonna focus on where we’re headed with treatment of Acute Myeloid Leukemia; what patients can look forward to in the coming year.
We will also answer questions that you can submit to AML at patientpower.info. And please note that we cannot provide specific medical advice over the internet. And it wouldn’t be fair to you. We always recommend that you seek care from your own doctor or AML specialist, and that’s how you will get the best treatment for you.
I’d like to start now and introduce our panel. And we’ll start off with Dr. Thomas LeBlanc. A medical oncologist, palliative care physician, and patient experience researcher from Duke Cancer Institute. Welcome, Dr. LeBlanc.
Dr. LeBlanc:
Hi, thanks for having me.
Beth Probert:
And I would like to introduce Michelle Rajotte. She is the Associate Director of the Leukemia Lymphoma Society’s Information Resources Center. Michelle has been with LLS for 13 years. Hi, Michelle.
Michelle Rajotte:
Hi, good to be here.
Beth Probert:
Thank you. And last but not least, I’d like to introduce our patient advocate today, James Bond. And James has survived Multiple Myeloma for 27 years, and AML for the past 7 years. James and his wife, Kathleen, have shared their story in 29 states. And patients can contact him directly at his email, which is Jim.Bond48@gmail.com.
So, thank you for joining us today, Jim.
James Bond:
Happy to be here.
Beth Probert:
Great. Well, Dr. LeBlanc, I would like to start with you. Tell us a little bit about your background in AML and palliative care, please.
Dr. LeBlanc:
Sure. So, by training I’m an oncologist. But when I went through my cancer care training, I realized that oftentimes we fail to really attend to some of the issues that are most important to patients and families. And those might be things related to symptom burden, quality of life, emotional well-being, communication, understanding of prognosis.
And so, I ended up pursing additional training in palliative medicine where those types of issues really are the focus. And in doing so, got a sense that really adding specialist palliative care to cancer care and blood cancer care particularly, really could improve many aspects of the experience for patients and families.
And ultimately that is what my clinical practice and research have come to focus on. But in my clinical practice, I largely see patients with myeloid malignancies, including Acute Myeloid Leukemia and some related conditions.
Beth Probert:
That is so interesting and very unique because very often we see our doctors and we don’t get the whole palliative side of it. So, I can honestly and personally say that that is just a wonderful added bonus. Thank you.
And Michelle, can you tell us a little bit about your role at LLS, and really what the goal of the information resource center is?
Michelle Rajotte:
Sure. So, I’m part of the Information Resource Center at Leukemia Lymphoma Society. Which, The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s main goal is to help find a cure for Leukemia, Lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease, Myeloma, and improve the quality of life of all patients and their families.
And IRC is apart of that. So, basically, what we do is – it’s staffed by information specialists who are master level, either social workers, nurses, or other healthcare professionals who’ve been trained in blood cancer. And we can do anything from answer questions, provide disease information, help with clinical trial searches, find different support resources, refer to other organizations if we need to for other resources. But really, it’s anything that someone needs in the moment.
So, we’ll talk with them over the phone, through email, or through chat online, and we figure out what it is that they need based on talking to them, or whatever they provide to us. And then, provide them with the resources and support they need.
Beth Probert:
Wow. And that is just invaluable. And we definitely need to bring focus to the cancer patients and what your department could ultimately provide to them. Thank you.
So, Jim. You are a long-time survivor. How has your cancer diagnosis impacted you emotionally?
James Bond:
Well, it’s been like riding a roller coaster. My care-giver wife, Kathleen, Kathleen is sorry she can’t be joining us today. But the lowest point, of course, was getting diagnosed with a deadly incurable blood cancer. My first one, Multiple Myeloma. And then the second one, AML, many years later.
And so, what we tried our best to do is, to try to even out that roller coaster ride emotionally. And, I’ll give you an example, after 10 years of dealing with Myeloma, I was told, Jim, there’s nothing left that can help you, you need to go to a hospice. And that was obviously crushing.
And what we tried to do is pull each other up and say, “Look, we’ve been through tough spots before.” And we figured out that just rely on the doctors, rely on our own research ability, and they’ll be something coming up. And we were able to figure out, hey, there’s a clinical trial that was mentioned to us, and within a month of being told to go to a hospice, we were out of town in a clinical trial, and within two weeks, I was told, “You’re in remission.”
So, that was a tremendous high. And again, what we try to do when we get really good news is pull each other down and try not to be so excited, but we try to even things out. And that’s very difficult to execute, but for 27 years now, we’ve had a good deal of experience. There are a few other tings we do emotionally, we say, “Look, let’s do all we can, and then let’s not look back and second guess ourselves.”
And even to make it more normal, we cut off all cancer discussions with ourselves, ideas, or with a family member at 8:00 p.m. our time. We say, “You know what? Let’s just do what we’re gonna do at night, and let’s defer that to the morning.” That tends to let our emotions calm down and let us live more normal lives. At least in our minds.
It has not been easy. It’s been very difficult and emotionally at times, we’ve actually played a role of trying to lift up the medical team who, the AML diagnosis in particular, they explained to me, “Jim, you’re 64 years old,” When I got AML, that was seven years ago. They said, “Your chances of survival are not good. The only way you can live is through a fourth bone marrow transplant. And this one has to be not from your matching sister, but from an unrelated donor, if we can find one.”
So, they really encouraged me to consider just hanging up, but our approach, and this helps us emotionally is, no, we’re gonna treat this thing called cancer like a problem. We’re gonna put it in front of us, and we’re gonna deal with it as analytically, or unemotionally as we possibly can. And lo and behold, the doctors, as they’d come around in my, I don’t know, 10-week stay in the hospital, whatever it was, they would keep trying to say, “Jim, don’t get your hopes up. This might not work out.”
And it did work out, and we found ourselves much better off by, I do my favorite thing, and that is, I make myself exercise each and every day. And sometimes that exercise is not much, it’s walking with my IV pole around the floor section when doing a transplant.
Or it’s walking on my treadmill on snowy icy Ohio days like today. But that helps me emotionally because it gives me something that’s not cancer, it’s quiet time to think, and it really led to something that’s been just magical in terms of helping both of us emotionally.
When I had to leave town to do the clinical trial, my wife, Kathleen, got to thinking as a long-term volunteer of the American Cancer Society, she realized that there are not enough people in the country aware of these things that the ACS has called, “Hope Lodges.” So, she founded, launched, and leads, to this day – this was 13 years ago, she launched the first one. And I was not a cyclist, but I saw a link between the exercise that I think is so vital for me emotionally and physically, and this bike ride. So, I decided to buy a bike and trained. And I’ll be darned, I’ve ridden it every year four days, 328 miles from Cleveland to Cincinnati.
Beth Probert:
Wow, well that is really inspiring.
James Bond:
Thank you. And that helps me tremendously emotionally because that training and riding takes up a good three and a half, four months of my year, and I look forward to that, and the fundraising is tremendously exhilarating because I get to hear from people that I don’t hear from that often.
Beth Probert:
Yes.
James Bond:
So, the key there is emotionally, I think, is just having a long-term plan, and not letting –
Beth Probert:
And Jim, I’m just gonna jump in really quickly, this is amazing information. So, hold that thought, we are going to jump on some of the thoughts you said, and I do want to say real quickly, I love the, “We” in that. We.
James Bond:
Oh, absolutely.
Beth Probert:
And we’ll click back onto that. So, I’m gonna hop over now to Dr. LeBlanc. And could you go through, with your vast experience, what are the key emotional side effects that you see your ALM patients facing day to day?
Dr. LeBlanc:
Yeah, this is such an important question, and it’s one that we don’t ask often enough, and we don’t talk about these issues very often, unfortunately. So, I’m really excited that we’re having this webinar, first of all. And I’ll tell you, it’s important to recognize as well, every patient, every person is different. So, there is not one quintessential AML experience. That’s really important to recognize.
But at the same time, when we have studied this issue and interviewed patients, and care givers, and family members, there certainly have been some common themes that have come through about people’s experiences. And one of the one that is, I think, particularly important to recognize is the sense of shock at this diagnosis. Now, acute leukemias, we call them acute because they tend to come on very quickly and suddenly.
And many of the patients we see will say things like, “I was fine three weeks ago. And now I can’t even walk up a flight of stairs.” And, “I’m so tired, I’m taking naps, this is not like me. I usually run marathons, and now I can only run a couple miles, something is going on.” And this really degenerates, for many, people over the course of day or a few weeks.
And sometimes it means they end up urgently in the hospital and are told, “You can’t leave. Something’s going on, we don’t really know what it is, but we’re concerned. You might have leukemia.” And if they’re not at a large medical center, they may get shipped off hours away from home to a place that’s not familiar where they don’t know anyone.
So, that shock and suddenness of the diagnosis makes everything else much more difficult, and it sometimes creates, even, social isolation related to where AML is treated. Where it tends to be treated more so at academic centers than it is in the community, although, certainly, some of these treatments are provided in the community.
But patients getting high-dose therapies do tend to come to large research centers. So, we’ve certainly seen that issue impact many patient’s experiences. The other one that comes up quite often, that really compounds the decision making and the emotional difficulties, is the issue of uncertainty. So, unlike many cancers, we really don’t know what to expect when a person is diagnosed with AML. And everyone asks, “Well, what stage is this?” and we don’t really have stages for this disease.
We, certainly, have ways that we can try to get a sense for what we might expect for the patient who’s sitting before us. And we do all kinds of fancy testing, and we talk at length about those issues, but at the same time, we really can’t say what’s going to happen to you, my patient sitting across from me who I’m trying to help guide through the process.
And there are actually a lot more risks associated with Leukemia treatments as you heard Jim talk about. A stem-cell transplant is a difficult and risky process, and sometimes that’s part of curing AML, or hoping to cure AML. But even high-dose chemotherapies in the hospital, some people actually do have really difficult complications, and even can die from those treatments, and yet, those are the treatments that usually are required to cure a person.
So, we have to have these difficult decisions made sometimes under a lot of distress emotionally, and amid the suddenness of this diagnosis, where we say, this is probably the best treatment for you, and it gives you a chance at cure, but it’s not a guarantee. And some people end up not making it out of the hospital. And usually what happens is, that’s just such difficult information. Many folks shut down and they say, “I don’t know, what should I do. Tell me what to do.”
Or they’ll turn to a family member or a friend who might or might not be around and available during that difficult time, especially if they’re in another city away from home. So, these are some of the things we’ll commonly see when patients are newly diagnosed with AML.
Beth Probert:
Wow. That is very intense. And there’s obvious emotional connections. And sometimes we hear someone’s diagnosed, and we completely forget that emotional side. So, I wanted to ask you, as well, you’ve been involved with research into the relationship between the emotional stress in AML patients and the overall prognosis. Could you please explain how the study was conducted, and what were some of the prevailing results of this study?
Dr. LeBlanc:
Sure. So, we did a longitudinal study of patients with AML who were being seen and treated on our in-patient service. So, these were mostly patients getting high-dose chemotherapy who would be stuck in the hospital for a month or even a bit more.
Like Jim described, getting these really intensive treatment regiments. And this was a study basically aimed at helping us better understand what people go through when they live that. And certainly, I’ve seen that in caring for many patients with AML, as have our nurses, and other members of the cancer care team, but actually, there has been very little formal, objective study of the patient experience with AML and related blood cancers.
So, what we did is we actually surveyed patients using validated instruments, and we assessed their symptoms, their quality of life, their overall distress levels, and in addition, we assed their understanding of their illness. Their understanding of what we call, “prognosis,” The idea of what the likely outcome of the treatment or the disease is going to be. And we did all of those – that whole battery of assessments every week when they were in the hospital, and then when they were out of the hospital, we did that every month.
And we followed patients for six or even upwards of 12 months, and different things happened. Some people went into remission and were cured, some people had relapses, some people went into transplant, some people had transient remissions, or even multiple relapses, got additional treatment. And by following patients over time, we were able to develop a profile of the patient experience with AML and look at different versions of that. Including, what people understand about their illness, and how that relates to their overall emotional well-being.
Beth Probert:
That is amazing. And was there something that just jumped out real quickly as far as the largest response rate you saw when people were taking care of that emotional part?
Dr. LeBlanc:
Well, the concerning thing that we found, which unfortunately is an issue across all of cancer care is that many people who are diagnosed with AML, especially when newly diagnosed, really don’t have a good understanding of the likely outcomes.
And it’s certainly not for lack of talking with patients and families about these issues, but it probably is a manifestation of the fact that this usually happened suddenly, as I mentioned, and it’s so emotionally overwhelming and difficult that it’s actually really difficult to contextualize the information that’s provided. And we, I think, end up overwhelming a lot of patients and families with so much information, that sometimes there’s a bit of a forest and trees problem, where maybe the most important factors don’t always get explained clearly or don’t come through well.
And we don’t always go back and check in about whether we did a good job of explaining things, which is unfortunately a shortcoming that most of us struggle with in taking care of patients. Communication of complex information is very difficult.
So, we found that many folks didn’t understand, for example, that the treatment they were receiving maybe wasn’t likely to yield a cure, which is true in some instances of AML. Or they might not have had a very good understand of the risks. So, one study, for example, suggests that AML patients may actually think the treatment is way more risky than it really is. And is that prompting some people to not receive intensive treatments that maybe could be the right choice for them and the most helpful for them. So, that was the one main interesting finding.
And then, related to that, unfortunately we also found that many patients who do come to more accurately understand the outcomes that are most likely with their particular situation, some of these are better than others, everyone’s different, the more accurately people understand their illness, there tends to me more emotional distress and sadness. Perhaps realizing that this is a very difficult disease to treat. And unfortunately, when we were doing this study, this was before we have eight new drugs approved in the last two years.
So, hopefully some of this has changed. But that’s why we’re having this webinar, and why we need to talk more about these issues.
Beth Probert:
Absolutely. So, now, Michelle. I definitely see that your role at LLS plays a huge part in this. And in your experience, how do you deal with this? What resources seem to be the most effective that you can provide patients in coping and the emotional side of this cancer diagnosis, and also, taking parts of what Dr. LeBlanc just said, I would love to hear from you now and what your role is.
Michelle Rajotte:
Sure. I think it’s different for different people. We’ll talk to people who want to know everything, and we’ll talk to people who just say, “Just tell me the basics, I can’t get overwhelmed right now.” And it also depends on where they are in their cancer journey. Are they just diagnosed; are they relapsed? I think a big piece is being able to talk to other people who can relate to what they are going through.
So, other people who have been through this already and have gotten to the other side and feel like, okay, it can get better, there is hope. Here’s some things that might help. Because unless you’ve been through it yourself, I don’t think you can completely understand. You can empathize, you can be there for someone, but your friends and your family may not be able to give you that support that someone could that has been through it.
So, for example, at LLS we have the Patty Robinson First Connection Program, which can help over the phone to be able to talk with someone. And they may be across the country, but they may be very similar in background to you and be able to answer some questions that you have while you’re going through things.
There’s an LLS community where you can go on and talk with people. We have a lot of online support groups. There are online chats that are set up to be able to talk with, again, others, it could be across the country, they’re people you may have never had the opportunity to meet. Or if you’re not doing well, or you’re in the hospital, or your immune system’s compromised, you still can reach out and get that support.
And it’s not going to be something where you physically have to go somewhere, but there’s those options too. Or someone may not be ready to go sit in a group and talk about what they’re going through but can sit in front of a computer and just say, “All right, I really do need to talk to someone.”
Also getting professional support from a social worker, or a counsellor, or just anyone who can help you get through this because it is extremely stressful. And some people think, “Oh, I really don’t need that.” But it may be exactly what you need just to help you get through it.
Also, pulling in friends and family. And again, sometimes they may be more stressful because they don’t completely understand, and even though they’re trying to help sometimes it may have the opposite effect, but the intention is there, and it’s good to have them there, even if it’s just to drive you to a doctor’s appointment. And help you understand what the doctor’s talking about.
Beth Probert:
Wow, that is very impactful. It sounds like you really give the patients a complete tool kit as far as how to have these conversations and the unbelievable amount of resources that are available to them. So, that is invaluable. Thank you, Michelle. We’ll get back to you again.
And Jim, going back to you, did you reach out to your doctor in regards to this whole emotional turmoil, and you said earlier the, “Roller coaster.” Was that a talking point with your doctor, by the way, on how you’re feeling and how to cope? What direction did you take when you were first diagnosed, and was your doctor part of the conversation?
James Bond:
Well, we’ve been very blessed, very lucky. My first doctor who diagnosed me, he really helped me by answering this question that I asked.
[00:27:30]
And asking questions is a good way for me to relive stress and gain information, like the kind of information that Beth and Tom talked about.
When I was new to blood cancer, I said, “Doctor, now, if you were in my shoes, whom would you have treat your case?” And frankly he was shocked because he was at a leading cancer institute in my hometown here, in Cleveland Ohio, and he gave it real thought. And his compassionate answer blew me away. He said, “Jim, the professor who taught my blood cancer course at the medical school works in another hospital. Another leading cancer institute here in Cleveland. And if I were in your shoes, I would go to him.”
Now, what I did – and for 10 years, until he retired, that man helped us, my wife and I, emotionally and medically in more ways than I could ever describe.
An 8:00 phone call one night, and which we had never gotten from him, his name was Bob and of course, it’s a doctor, it’s an oncologist, I’ve got a deadly cancer, he’s calling at night. I’m thinking, “Oh, my god. The world’s coming down.” He really relieved our stress, he said, “Jim, those shoes you had on at your last appointment, may I ask you where you got those?”
So, like you said, Tom, each case is unique, and in our case, stress has been relived in some very unusual ways. I got in a car accident after my first of four stem-cell transplants, and my wife was having real problems with stress because now I was in remission and seemingly home free until it came back five years later, but she was really stressed out until I had a car accident where, not my fault, but somebody t-boned me and it really was a tough accident.
I was okay, but the car was wrecked. But when I called her to tell her that, she flipped out. And all this pent-up emotional stress she was going through came out, and it manifested in her yelling at me, how could I possibly have an accident after all we’ve been through? And the thing is, she caught herself, she listened to herself, and she realized, oh my gosh, what’s the point in getting yourself all in a knot over your incurable deadly cancer? You can get taken out by a car accident as any time. Things like that.
Beth Probert:
Absolutely. So, she really put it in perspective for you, didn’t she?
James Bond:
It really did. It really did. It just happened, it was coincidental that it happened, but it did. And so, we’ve used that.
Another thing that really helps us with stress is, and this is gonna blow some people away, but the longer we’ve survived with these two cancers, the more we’ve gotten asked to share our story around the country. And if fact, in two countries overseas.
And here’s the thing. We realized from the very first story telling we did in our home town, how much telling our story helped us emotionally. We looked at each other when the couple left our house and we realized, oh my gosh, just sharing our story and the roller coaster parts of it, not the technical parts, but just the emotional part, that really helped us. And so, we welcome other opportunities, and we encourage other survivors, whether it be short-term or long-term survivors, to consider the kind of things that the LLS has, and other organizations that get us out there, get people out there to share your story. It is very helpful for us. And that was a huge surprise to us.
Beth Probert:
Well, that is wonderful. And Michelle, I’d like to come back to you for a moment. Do you have resources that you can provide to caregivers and patients with AML, that if they do want to share their story, and is that part of what you do, as well?
Michelle Rajotte:
Yes. That is part of the Patty Robinson First Connection program. What it is, it’s trained patient volunteers and family members who’ve been through this, who then want to be able to reach back out and help others who are going through it now. So, that’s one of the things they can do. They can volunteer at their chapters, and there’s always a way to get involved that way. There’s things on our website where people can share their story. There’s lots of different things. On the LLS community, there’s a way for them to be able to post what they’ve been through. There’s blogs that we do. There’s tons of different things. And as far as the care giver, Jim, you bring up a good point, they are going through a lot of stress, as well. And they need just as much support.
And we do have a lot of good caregiver resources now. We have a caregiver workbook that we can send out that has everything you could possibly need as a caregiver to know. And it’s divided into sections, so it’s not overwhelming, but it’s a way to have a roadmap to try to figure out, okay, what do I do? Because just like the person who’s been diagnosed, the care giver gets thrown into this and doesn’t know, what do we do; where do we go; what questions do we ask? I don’t even know where to start.
And a lot of times that’s the question we get at the IRC is, “I’m calling you, but I don’t even know why I’m calling you because I don’t even know what I’m supposed to know.” So, it’s really helping people try to figure out, what is that next step? And that’s really all you have to focus on. If you try to look at the big picture, it can be really overwhelming. But if you can get to the next step, that’s something that’s doable.
Beth Probert:
Wow, that’s wonderful to know you folks do provide those resources. Thank you.
So, Dr. LeBlanc, I’d like to shift over to managing fear, anxiety, depression. So, you mentioned a few times that being diagnosed can be so overwhelming, and we can’t ignore that this could lead to anxiety and depression. What sort of things do you recommend to your patients to allay these fears, and to put into place in their life in dealing with this? It’s obvious that for most people it is going to lead to the anxiety and depression.
Dr. LeBlanc:
Yeah, this is such an important question, and it’s a really difficult one to address. Most of the time, I do recommend that people talk about it. And sometimes that’s the most difficult thing to do even though it sounds obvious, but it’s often the elephant in the room.
So, many times, the doctors and other clinicians seeing patients with AML and other cancers are just so incredibly busy and also fixated on all of the medical details, and the labs, and the scans, and other treatments, complications, doses of chemo, all of these things that we need to be focused on, of course, that we forget about the person, and the way that they’re struggling with these issues.
And it’s not that we don’t care or that we’re bad people or anything, it’s just that’s never the number one priority when you have to get all of the details straight to make sure the person gets the right treatment. I try to ask, but sometimes we don’t do this. So, for example, if there are other clinicians listening and wondering how to do this, one thing that I do is to just say, “This is really difficult to go through. How are you holding up? What do you look to for strength?”
And I will ask the person there with them. Usually patients aren’t there alone, and typically the person who’s with them is the person who’s really helping them keep it all together. Whether it be a spouse, a family member, a caregiver, a friend.
And I usually turn to them and also ask them, “How are you holding up? What are you seeing? What is the patient not telling me?” You know? What are they going through that they’re – sometimes people will put on a brave face for the doctor and they won’t tell me how much they’re suffering at home, and I really need to know so that I can help.
So, really the best recommendation is open and honest communication. And the other great one is to seek out resources like the ones we just heard about. I sometimes will encourage patients to seek out a family therapist, a psychologist, somebody who they could see in the cancer center, a social worker, someone who they can sit down with for an even longer period of time and just talk about how difficult this experience is. And just talking about it sometimes is really some of the best medicine, honestly.
Beth Probert:
Wow. Yeah, I love the tie in to with making sure that the caregiver is doing okay, as well.
Dr. LeBlanc:
Yes.
Beth Probert:
We often look at them as a pillar of strength and forget that they need those resources.
And one of the things that I personally feel is really really helpful, and I’ve heard from the AML community as well, is the mind, body, soul; exercising, meditation. And Michelle, I wanted to ask you, is that something that, when you talk about resources, that your department provides? Do you find that that’s a very often asked question, and/or it’s a topic that you like to recommend to patients?
Michelle Rajotte:
We get a lot of questions about, what can I do? How can I help myself get healthier, or stay well? Or how can I help myself get stronger, or what can I do? And I think a lot of it is, you feel very powerless when you’re diagnosed, and you really don’t have any control. So, if there’s something you can do to feel like you’re taking part in your care and making decisions about some things you want to do, that’s great. We always say, “Check with your doctor to see what’s okay; what’s safe for you to do right now depending on how you’re doing.”
But we have a lot of resources on nutrition, we have a nutritionist that can do a consult, either over the phone or online through email. We have a lot of different resources, and webcasts, and podcasts, and videos, and we have a ton of resources.
It can be a little overwhelming just to go on to the website and try to figure out, okay, what do I look at? Where do I go? So, I would encourage them to call the IRC. We can walk you through, depending on what it is that you’re looking for in the moment, where to find it. How to bookmark it, so you can find it later.
But again, I think it’s really important to discus it with your doctor to see – obviously if you wanna go for a walk, and you’re okay to do it, that’s great. But if there’s a chance that your platelets are very low, and if something can happen, then you gotta check with them about that too. So, we’ll get an idea of what they can do, but we always send them back to the doctor, make sure whatever they decide to do, whether it’s supplements, again, check with your doctor because they can interact.
But anything they want to do to help themselves get stronger or take care of themselves is always a positive.
Beth Probert:
Wonderful. And, Jim, I’d like to ask you to stay on this topic for a minute. Could you give any advice about support groups?
James Bond:
Yes.
Beth Probert:
Is that something that you found to be a great resource in dealing with this kind of anxiety and depression?
James Bond:
Yes, I think support groups are for people who want to go to a support group. Put yourself back 27 years ago when we first we introduced to blood cancer. There were not a lot of support groups available. And we started out with keeping it more to ourselves and our family, and then as we grew comfortable with living an managing the fear, the risk, the anxiety, our circle spread out. But it really was not until we got invited to share our story that our eyes were opened of the power of support groups. And we could see it happening.
One other thing that, Tom, I’d like to mention to you, one of the most effective way to manage fear for my wife and I was late one Sunday night lying in week number six, or something, in the last transplant for AML, and I’m on the ropes, I’m in tough shape. And the phone rings, and it was my myeloma doctor from Boston where we go twice a year, his name’s Paul Richardson, he’s an outstanding, compassionate doctor.
It was Paul, and Paul said, “Jim, I’ve just talked to your wife Kathleen at her home,” she had just left for the night. And he said, he said to her what he then said to me. He said, “Jim, I know you’re in a tough spot, but I want you to know, that we’ve got other patients here at Dana Farber, who have been through exactly what you’re going through, myeloma followed by AML, bad, bad prognosis.”
And he assured me that I could do it. And, Tom, what that doctor’s phone call meant to my wife and I could have been the difference between getting through this thing, and not getting through it. Giving up, and not giving up.
And we really believe it’s because our doctors have taken the time to help us build a relationship with them. Knowing how busy they are, and how many patients they have, we found the world of oncologists and the nurses and the others, very compassionate people. And it’s worth that time to build that relationship whether it’s your ongoing doctor, or one that you go out of town for a second opinion with, those relationships mean everything. And the doctors who are willing to take their time, when it’s not really on the clock and help their patients, they are doing tons and tons of good for the world that we live in.
So, we’ve got some other techniques, but those are the things that really stand out to me in terms of managing in this area.
Beth Probert:
That’s wonderful, Jim, and it circles right back to you, Dr. LeBlanc, when you introduced yourself and you told us that there is just more than coming to the doctor, and reading the chart, and giving the blood results. It’s definitely very impactful. And what you spoke about earlier about how you bring in the palliative care and the emotional care. And on that note, I know this is a little cross-over, but can certainly add to anxiety and depression on everything that we’ve talked about, Dr. LeBlanc, but do you encounter, through your care and conversations with clients, their anxiety over the financial part of care? Is that something that you hear often?
Dr. LeBlanc:
Absolutely. The idea of financial toxicity, sort of like other kinds of systemic toxicities you would have from chemotherapy, it’s just as real as a patient who gets neuropathy from their chemo. And in some cases, may be more crippling.
One of my colleagues here at Duke is a leading researcher in this area, and he’s taught me a lot about this, and unfortunately, I’ve seen it a lot in my clinic. And as we are fortunate to have a number of new therapies available for AML and other diseases like multiple myeloma, the unfortunate aspect of this issue is that many of them are pills, and may states do not have parity laws in place that require insurers to treat pills the same way as they do chemo therapy that you would get in an infusion suite.
North Carolina is unfortunately one of those, where I practice, where we still don’t have a law.
And that’s sometimes means I’m talking to a patient about an exciting new therapy, and then I find out that their monthly copay is going to be $3,000.00, and who can afford that? That’s just the copay amount for the patient just for one month of medication. This is, unfortunately, happening a lot. And thankfully, there are many resources that we can engage to help patients with these issues, but it is an increasing problem as medications are more sophisticated, they also have gotten much more expensive.
Beth Probert:
Yeah, and we hear this so often. And, of course, Michelle, I’m sure you’re hearing this, as well. And your department can direct people to the appropriate resources?
Michelle Rajotte:
Yes. It’s something we hear every day, unfortunately. Like Dr. LeBlanc was saying, we’ve got all these great new treatments now, but so many of them are oral, and a lot of patients, if they’re on Medicaid/Medicare especially, their copay is extremely high.
We do have copay assistance through LLS, we will also refer people onto other organizations that have assistance if we know of them. So, anywhere we can get people to get the help. We also do a lot of advocacy on that end, and we’re in Washington a lot and we’re sharing a lot of patient stories, and we’re trying to get the word out there that we shouldn’t have these barricades to treatment. We do all this research, we find all these wonderful treatments, and then people can’t have access to them. And that shouldn’t be.
So, that’s one of the things, along with the research and the patient assistance we have, we also focus on the advocacy part, and making sure that the oral parity bills are passed in hopefully every state. And that things are little bit more on an even plane, so people can use these wonderful treatments that are coming out.
Beth Probert:
Wonderful. And Michelle just hit on treatments, so Dr. LeBlanc; I would like to now go back to you.
And could you tell us, in regard to treatments, advances in clinical trails for AML, what’s happening in research and should patients be hopeful?
Dr. LeBlanc:
Yeah, it’s really a very tremendous time in cancer care and in biomedicine in general. As I mentioned earlier, we had, if I remember correctly, eight new drugs approved for AML in the last two years. And we had been mostly using the same treatment for patients for the prior 40 years. The seven plus three induction regiment was developed in the ’60s or early ’70s, and mostly that’s the same regiment or related ones to it that we’ve been giving to people when we give them high-dose therapies for this disease.
Other things have improved during that time, as well, that are really improving outcomes, so we have much better supportive care medicines. We have growth factor injections that work better. We have better antibiotics. We have anti-fungal medicines that work a lot better.
So, when you add those developments, even to the old chemotherapy, that had improved outcomes prior to this spirt of approvals in the last two years, but now, especially, we really are in a new ear of how we treat AML. And now, we need to actually molecularly and genetically profile each individual patient’s leukemia, so that we can best know how to treat their disease because at this point, we have several testable targets that we might then prescribe a medication to address in an individual person’s case of AML. So, it’s getting more complicated, at yet at the same time, there are many more options, and it really is a time to be very hopeful about how things are going.
Beth Probert:
That sounds so encouraging. And Michelle, going back to you. How can you lead clients and their care givers to these clinical trials that are on the horizon?
And can you talk a little bit about what that process looks like?
Michelle Rajotte:
Sure. If someone reaches out the IRC, we do have a group of nurses who do clinical trial searches specifically for blood cancers. And it’s not just, we’re gonna hand you a list as say, “Here, go talk to your doctor.” They will help through the process. So, they’ll really in-depth dig, and try to find trials that might be an option. Have you go back to your doctor, but then walk through it with you to help you get into that trial.
Because there’s so much research now, it’s wonderful, but it’s also really overwhelming if you try to do it by yourself. And a lot of them are more focused trials now, so you have to know what kind of mutations you have and that kind of thing. So, it’s a partnership where there’s a form that you would need to fill out for us to have that information, and then we help you walk through that process of, is there a trial that’s out there for you; is it something that’s appropriate for you, along with your doctor. And then, how do we help you make sure that you can get through the whole process.
Beth Probert:
Wonderful. What a fantastic resource. Thank you.
So, I would like to take a few questions that we’ve received, and, Jim, I’d like to hear your feedback on this one. And the viewer asked, “People keep asking me how I’m doing, and it just makes me worry more.” Do you have any advice, Jim, for people to tell those that love them and just want to help them that all these questions are causing anxiety, what would you suggest, Jim?
James Bond:
Yeah, a couple things that I’ve found useful. I explain to them I just got done with playing nine holes of golf, or I just got done exercising, and I’m quick turn it back and say, “How are you doing?” and try to get as much out of the other person, so that they understand that I’m comfortable in my skin, and I’m not stressing out or how things are going.
But it’s easy for people to understand that, hey, this guy’s got an incurable deadly blood cancer, or two, and we worry about him. So, I try to just loosen up, and turn it back on them, and hopefully they get more reassurance that, hey, the guy’s not stressing out, he’s okay. But you know, once you do all you can do, the rest of it is just fate, luck, whatever. So, that’s what we try to do.
Beth Probert:
I love that response. And people mean well, but putting the focus back on them is just fabulous. That’s really great, thank you, Jim.
James Bond:
Oh, you’re welcome.
Beth Probert:
And Dr. LeBlanc, we have a question from Shannon from Boston, and her questions is, “How can I manage the daily stress of like with AML? Are there proven strategies to cope with the stress?” So, we did talk about a few things earlier, but what advice would you give Shannon?
Dr. LeBlanc:
Yeah, I’m not aware of proven strategies specifically for AML, which is part of where we all struggle. Not knowing what to do and how to best support individual patients. And as I mentioned earlier, every individual is quite different. but I usually recommend meeting with a professional to talk about it. And some people are opposed to that and they don’t want to do that, but more people are at least open to the idea. And so, Shannon, if you’re somebody who’s open to that idea, I would actually encourage you to seek out a specialist in palliative medicine.
And many people misunderstand what that means. So, I want to just take a moment to explain why I would think that’d be helpful and what the evidence shows. So, clinicians who are trained in palliative medicine are basically experts on well-being.
They know how to address symptoms, they know how to help with quality of life maintenance, and they know how to help people cope with difficult diagnoses and serious illnesses like cancers. Regardless of the expected outcome. So, they can be helpful if we’re aiming at cure and we think there’s a really good chance of that, and they can be helpful in cases where we know that’s not gonna happen, and anywhere in between.
So, one of the misconceptions is that they can only be helpful when people are dying, but actually, what we found in a lot of research is that when you add a palliative care specialist to the cancer care team, even from the point of diagnosis, that patients feel better, and they do better, and even live longer. Several studies, now, have shown that in a recent medi-analysis that we publish, for example.
So, part of the mechanism by which palliative care specialists help patients feel better and live better is not only by addressing physical symptoms, but also at addressing these difficult emotional and existential kinds of issues.
Helping with coping. How do I get through the day; how do I live with the fear that this diagnosis instills in me; how do I enjoy life? Those kinds of questions are very common. And palliative care specialists are often very equipped at helping. Or even psychologists would be another great resource, where this is a person you’re going to see where the entire focus of the visit on those issues, so that they definitely don’t get pushed to the last 30 seconds of the visit when the doctor has their hand on the door knob and they’re trying to get out to the next patient.
Beth Probert:
Wow, and I love what you said that your study shows that people who do seek out the palliative care will live longer. And seeing a counsellor or psychologist too, both of those are just amazing suggestions. Thank you.
We have one last question from Doug from Boise, and, Michelle, I’m going to direct this question to you.
Doug says, he doesn’t know how to find a support group. So, where does he start? Could you give us some feedback?
Michelle Rajotte:
Sure. He can start by calling us. We can try to find out if there’s one locally for him. There’s also access to the online chat, which meets in the evening and he can talk with people that way. There’s a lot of different options. So, there’s the traditional support groups that you go to, but there’s other ways of getting support, as well. So, that’s a good way to start. It can be very overwhelming to try to find one. The other thing you can do is if you’re being treated at a hospital, talk with the hospital social worker because they’re usually pretty knowledgeable about what supports are in the area. But I would say those would be the two good places to start.
Beth Probert:
That’s wonderful. And Michelle, can you give us your specific phone number and email where people can reach you and your department?
Michelle Rajotte:
Sure. So, the number to the Information Resource Center, we’re available Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. is 1-800-955-4572. The other way to access us is through the website, which is LLS, short for Leukemia Lymphoma Society, much easier to type, .org. When you get on there, there’s a way to reach the information resource center either by email, by chat, or the phone number will be there, as well, if you need it. But that’s really the best way to reach us.
Beth Probert:
That’s wonderful. And we just got one last question, and we have enough time for it. And Jim, I’m wondering if you have some advice about this question. And it is, “My partner’s often struggling deeply with the diagnosis. I don’t know the right words to say to help him feel better.” Could you give some advice to this topic, Jim?
James Bond:
Yes. The weekend I was diagnosed, the very qualified oncologist rightly said in response to my question, “How long do you think I’ll live?” He said, “At most you’ll live three years.” And so, I struggled, my wife struggled, I was in my early 40’s, that weekend was hell. And here’s what got me out of my funk and got us back to problem solving and putting this thing on our agenda to do all we can. I looked back at my own life, here I am in my 40’s, two boys, I’ve been healthy most all my life. And I thought of, there was a real setback, medically I had, a bad injury playing sports when I was in high school, and to me as a high school kid, that was the end of my life. Sport was gone; a lot of recuperation.
And as I looked back on that with this cancer diagnosis, I said, “You know what, as tough as that was at the time, as devastating as that was, a lot of good things happened because of that setback.” Real things. Like it got me studying a lot more in college, I got a nice job as a result of it. Lots of good things happened. It caused me to overcome things, and I said to myself and my wife, “Hey, we’re gonna make this deadly cancer diagnosis the same thing.” And like all of us I think have been saying: every case is unique.
So, I don’t get bummed out when people give me their prognosis or whatever, or I read something that’s not good. My case is different than everybody else, and we can look at it that way. And in the end, this can happen to any of us. So, it got me off my back, it got us in there fighting, and that’s the way I look at it.
Beth Probert:
That is wonderful advice, and what I hear you saying is that, really, with your care partner, and your family, and I’ve heard this from Dr. LeBlanc and Michelle, as well, and, of course, Jim, that you’re a team. And finding that way to survive this as a team, so that’s great advice, Jim. Thank you.
James Bond:
You’re welcome.
Beth Probert:
So, I do want to thank the Patient Empowerment Network for this really impactful program today. I’d also like to thank The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society for partnering with us on this webinar. And I would like to thank our guests as we come to a close to this program. So, Dr. Thomas LeBlanc from the Duke caner institute, thank you so much for taking the time today and sharing the real benefits of the focus on the palliative care.
And Michelle Rajotte, from The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Your contribution has been wonderful, the resources that your department does provide. And Jim Bond, it’s just been so great hearing from you and your very long journey with AML, and what you’re dealing with, and how you have made the best life possible, and all of your dedication to advocacy. So, thank you so much for joining us today.
James Bond:
You’re Welcome.
Beth Probert:
And if our viewers have missed anything or just want to re-watch the webinar, a replay will be available in the coming weeks. Thank you for joining us, I’m Beth Probert, and I look forward with meeting with the AML community again. Thank you.
We thank Celgene Corporation, Daiichi Sankyo, Genentech, Helsinn, and Novartis for their support.
Emerging Research and Promising AML Treatment Approaches
Emerging Research and Promising AML Treatment Approaches from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.
Leading experts shared recent breakthroughs in AML treatment and research announced at the 2018 American Society of Hematology (ASH) annual meeting. The panel discusses new drug approvals, emerging clinical trial data, innovative, individualized approaches to treat distinct AML subtypes, and how these advances translate to the real world and impact AML patients.
Transcript:
Beth:
Hello, and welcome to today’s webinar. I’m Beth Probert. I am an MPN patient, was diagnosed a few years ago with polycythemia vera. Today’s webinar is where are we headed with the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia. What can patients look forward to for the coming year?
This is a Patient Empowerment Network program. And I’d like to thank our sponsors. As always, our sponsors have no editorial control over the content. Today, we’re going to talk about topics like recent breakthroughs in AML treatment and research announced at the 2018 American Society of Hematology ASH Annual Meeting. We’ll look at emerging clinical trials and how to access them, individualized approaches to treat distinct AML subtypes, and how will these advances translate for patients. You’ll also hear from AML patient Steve, as he shares his first-hand experience facing AML and how he’s doing now.
We will also answer viewer questions. And if you have a question, please keep in mind, we can’t get real specific with these questions, so try to keep them general, really geared more towards information and questions.
And we’d like you to send your questions throughout the program. We will try to answer all questions that come through. And if we can’t get to all of them, we will certainly address them through future webinars. Now, I’d love to introduce you to today’s guest. Our first guest is Dr. Naval Daver, associate professor, Department of Leukemia at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Welcome, Dr. Daver. I’m so glad you could join us today.
Naval Daver:
Hello. Thank you for having me. Glad to join.
Beth:
And our next guess is Leah Szumita. And Leah provides clinical trial support at the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. So, Leah, thank you. I’m glad you can be here today.
Leah:
Thank you. I’m so happy to be here.
Beth:
And our next guess is our patient panelist, Steve Buechler, and he is an AML patient who has had a remarkable journey. Steve, welcome from Minnesota.
Steve:
Thank you. I’m happy to be here.
Beth:
Great. Well, Steve, we’d like to get started with you. I’d like for you to tell our viewers a little bit about your life with AML. And if you can include how did you get diagnosed, what was that like getting diagnosed, and how did you react, who is your support team, and just what you’ve been though. So, I’ll turn it over to you now.
Steve:
Well, at age 64, I was living what I thought was a normal, healthy life. I had no symptoms. My primary care physician had been monitoring my white blood cell count for a couple of years because it was borderline low but not too alarming. And then, in the spring of 2016, it began to drop more precipitously.
So, he recommended I see a hematologist, and I went to do that. And the hematologist said I should probably have a bone marrow biopsy. And so, I agreed to do that sort of to humor them because I didn’t feel sick. I didn’t have any symptoms. I didn’t have any idea anything was wrong. It was a memorable week. The biopsy was on a Monday. On Tuesday, I swam my normal 50 laps. I did some shopping. I ate dinner out. Wednesday morning, I played in a weekly poker game with some retired guys. So, life was normal, until that phone call that came Wednesday afternoon informing me I had acute myeloid leukemia, and I had to get to a hospital right away.
So, the next day, I checked into a hospital. The day after that, Friday, I started chemotherapy. So, in 48 hours, I went from feeling perfectly healthy to 24/7 chemotherapy drip. And they started me on this standard treatment that’s been use, I think, for a very long time called 7 + 3 Cytarabine and Daunorubicin to try to get the cancer into remission. And so, I spent a week on that medication.
And then, I waited for the inevitable drop in my white blood cell count and my immune system. I was going to be very vulnerable to various kinds of infections. And as predicted, I came down with colitis and an E coli infection, body rash, and a bunch of other stuff that they couldn’t even identify. But the infectious disease doctors stepped in and dealt with those issues one at a time. So, I ended up spending 5.5 weeks in the hospital for my counts to recover. But the good news was, one month after starting chemo, they did a bone marrow biopsy that found there was no residual leukemia. So, the first goal had been reached, at that point. I was in remission.
Adding to the story, of course, the first night I spent in the hospital, my wife was with me and left late in the evening to go home. And as she arrived home, she had a stabbing pain in her right leg. The next morning, she got up and could hardly get out of bed, called 9-1-1. They brought her to my hospital in an ambulance through the ER.
And it turned out she had a fractured femur. So, I was on one floor of the hospital in the chemo ward, and she was on another floor of the hospital awaiting subsequent surgery to repair her leg. And then, she went off to a transitional care unit for rehab. So, when I realized our house was going to be unoccupied for about a month, I started to write to our neighbors on email. And I found it was a really useful way to communicate. So, I ended up, over the many months that followed, adding maybe 60 people to that email list and sending over 60 emails out, over the course of a year and a half to keep people informed of what was going on.
I, subsequently realized, as I was writing for other people that I was really using that writing to make sense of my own experience. I struggled to figure out what was going on and how I could capture it and how I could explain to people. And it was useful to get their responses back, but it was useful for me. It was very therapeutic for me just to have that writing experience to make sense out of what was going on.
After 5.5 weeks, I got permission to leave. I went home for a while. But I was awaiting the genetic testing of my cancer to figure out what the next round of treatment would be. Because I think people know, with AML, there needs to be a second arm of the treatment. It can come back very fast and very ferociously. I was told that the genetic testing of my cancer would put me in either a low risk or a high-risk category for recurrence. And that would point towards either chemotherapy, if it was low risk, and stem cell transplant, if it was high risk.
When the results finally came in, they said, “Well, you’re kind of in an intermediate category.” So, the way forward was not as clear as I thought it might be. So, I talked to my initial oncologist. I did my own research. I, subsequently, went and talked to a transplant oncologist at the University of Minnesota Medical Center who sort of nudged me towards the transplant option. I went to the Mayo Clinic and got a second opinion. And all of the indications really were that I would be a good candidate for transplant. I had no comorbidity. I had no other health problems.
And everybody thought I should probably be able to withstand the conditioning fairly well. So, eventually, I came around to that decision to have a stem cell transplant. I had a brother who was a half match donor. But the folks at the BMT unit said we also have some good umbilical cord blood matches for you. And so, I was, again, faced with the decision about which way to go. But it turned out they had a study. Don’t they always have a study? I was randomly assigned to the cord blood donor option. So, my brother was off the hook.
And I ended up having a double cord blood stem cell transplant in October of 2016, about four or five months after I was initially diagnosed. That procedure went very smoothly. And within three weeks, a biopsy revealed that one of my cord donors was 99% engrafted, which is pretty early for a cord blood procedure. So, that was good news. I was able to go home, at that point, and begin a pretty long, extensive, and sometimes arduous process of recovery.
The first 100 days, they offered me to come back to clinic daily for the first month or so to get blood tests, to get platelets, to get red blood cell transfusions, whatever it is that you need to keep you healthy. It’s a pretty vulnerable time. One of the oncologists, at the transplant unit, described this whole procedure as, first, we bring you to the brink of death by killing off diseased immune system. And then, we try to bring you back again. Well, it worked, in my case, I’m happy to report. So, by early 2017, I was beginning to taper off my anti-rejection medication. That ended in April of that year.
And then, it was just a process of gradually getting more strength, getting better. And, in my case, very fortunately, I avoided any trace of graft versus host disease. So, that allowed me to have a pretty healthy recovery. One year after my transplant, of course, I had to go in and get my baby shots, my vaccinations and needles because my previous immune system had been obliterated. And they only gave me the dead vaccines, at that point, because they reasoned I couldn’t handle the live ones.
So, that happened at Year 2. And that was recently completed about two months ago. I got the rest of my vaccines. The other good part of the story is, although there was a 60 to 70% chance of graft versus host disease, I never had any trace of that. I’ve since become very active in talking with other patients as a volunteer, doing some writing, becoming involved in the cancer community. And I’ve come to appreciate really how fortunate my story was. I think the three big indicators were I got into remission on the first try. I’ve talked to a lot of patients who haven’t been able to do that.
My transplant engrafted within three weeks, which was a very solid, early result. And a lot of patients don’t have that kind of success. And I had no graft versus host disease. So, that’s about as good of a story as you can have with AML, as I understand it. So, obviously, I’m very grateful to have done that. And something like that gives me a lot of motivation to try and give something back. So, I’ve been participating in various ways in the cancer community.
Believe it or not, that’s the short version.
Beth:
Steve, you have a remarkable story. I just heard – we talked earlier, and just to keep hearing your story again is really just so noteworthy. And the three points you made, just having the early remission the first time with chemo is amazing. And early engraftment just within three weeks and no graft versus host disease. And your enthusiasm and wanting to give back and just with your writing. And we’ll talk a little bit later. I know that you have a book that’s coming out. So, your story is, for someone like me, amazing. But Dr. Daver, I’d like to turn to you, for a few moments, and tell me, is Steve’s story typical?
And what kind of feedback do you have on his journey?
Naval Daver:
So, Steve’s story is a very good outcome story. It’s not necessarily typical, as Steve mentioned. About 70 to 80% of our patients will go into remission with the first induction. So, it’s a high number, but it’s not 100%. And if you don’t go into remission with the first induction that is actually one of the very high risk or adverse features. It’s called primary refractory AML. And those patients usually do have a much harder time. The second thing is about 60% of patients will fall in what we call intermediate groups. So, we do do molecular and cytogenetics. And if we find that we have favorable molecular cytogenetic changes, then, those are considered to be good.
And we may not do transplant. On the other hand, if you have unfavorable cytogenetic molecular, then, it’s very clear a transplant probably is the only hope for long term survival. But, unfortunately, a lot of patients fall into intermediate group.
Now, that intermediate group is becoming smaller and smaller because we are understanding more and more about the molecular machinery, the cytogenetics, and the prognostic impact of new molecular mutations. So, we are able to triage patients better into high risk or low risk, which helps us make the transplant decision. But I think the most fortunate thing, in Steve’s case, was the lack of GVHD. And that actually is very uncommon. Most of the patients we see will have some degree of GVHD. It may be acute. It maybe chronic. In most cases, I will say that it is manageable. We rarely see very severe ICU requiring GVHD or fatalities from GVHD.
But about 60 to 70% will have some degree of GVHD, will require some treatment for it with steroids or additional immunosuppression. And in some cases, it can take many months and can be a major discomfort and affect quality of life. So, I think that was fantastic that he did not have the GVHD. And I think all of those features, although are seen in a traditional AML story, I think Steve was fortunate, and the outcome was very favorable so far.
Beth:
Great. I really like that feedback. And what I wanted to ask you, as well, in regard to the no graft versus host disease, you said about 60 to 70% will actually encounter that. So, am I correct in assuming then that, when you do a transplant with someone, you account that that’s probably going to happen, the graft versus host disease and you have treatments and things lined up in anticipation of that happening?
Dr. Daver:
Yeah, absolutely. When we do the stem cell transplant itself, we actually do prophylaxis for graft versus host disease. Almost all patients will be on steroids, some form of immune prophylaxis. It may be tacrolimus. It may be sirolimus. There are some newer drugs. And in spite of that, if we see graft versus host disease, we have some very good medications.
In fact, some recent drugs approved such as Ruxolitinib, Ibrutinib, etc., which can work. But in spite of all of that, I would say a majority of patients do face a struggle with graft versus host disease. And they do have some degree. Now, again, it may not be severe. It may be in the form of graft versus host disease of the mouth, which causes your ability to eat to be decreased, or it may be the skin, which may be itchy or uncomfortable, or it could be ocular, which causes eye irritation and burning and requires eye drops. So, they may not be severe, but they hugely do cause discomfort of that quality of life.
But yes, we do try our best to avoid it. And in some patients, we are able to get away with none. And in some patients, they will have mild to moderate, which has to be treated. Luckily, with the newer generation of immune prophylaxis monitoring treatment, we have very few severe graft versus host disease, which is a good thing.
Beth:
Great. I’m so glad you touched on that. So, I wanted to shift gears a little bit, Dr. Daver, and find out from you what are some of the key takeaways for AML patients and care partners from ASH.
And I also wanted to say what I’ve heard a lot, in regard to AML is that, for almost 40 years, there was just a standard way of treating. And all of a sudden, in the very recent years or maybe year, I’m hearing that there’s so much now, new drugs and things happening. So, would you mind touching upon some of those key takeaways?
Dr. Daver:
Absolutely. I think, this year 2018 was clearly the year of AML. There’s just, compared to all of the other malignancies, in the last two years, there’s just been a huge amount of progress in the way of approvals. Now, what I do have to say is, although we are seeing the fruits of a lot of efforts, actually, the research in AML has been very intensive for the last 15 to 20 years. And what we’re now seeing is really the combination of a lot of those efforts. Molecular, immune analysis, which have led to these drug approvals.
But today, really, I think, compared to even three years ago, when we did not have a number of these drugs, the whole outlook for treatment of AML has changed dramatically. So, we’ve had eight new drugs approved in a few years. And, to put it in perspective, for the 40 years before that, we actually really had almost no drug approved. There was one drug, Gemtuzumab, approved, but it was actually withdrawn from the market. So, when they say when it rains, it pours, that kind of really did happen, in the case of acute myeloid leukemia. But what’s really important, I think, I that there are now a number of targeted therapies towards particular mutations.
And some of these have actually been approved, in the frontline setting. So, now, it has become very important that we don’t just treat all AMLs as one disease. In fact, that’s something we knew for about 20 years that AML is one of the most heterogenous of all malignancies. Lung cancer and AML, these are probably the two most heterogenous cancers where it’s not really this is AML, it’s different types of AML, which can have prognosis of 95% cure rate all the way down to 10 to 15%.
So, identifying these groups was very important for prognosis. And that’s something we have been doing but more important for treatment. So, for example, a mutation that is called an FLT3 mutation is very, very important because, on its own, it is associated with an adverse prognosis. These patients had high white counts, proliferative disease, and their three year or five-year survival was usually 20 to 25%, when we first identified this mutation in 2001. Now, there are new drugs called FLT3 inhibitors that specifically inhibit the FLT3 mutation pathway.
And with the addition of FLT3 inhibitors, specifically a drug called Midostaurin that was FDA approved 1.5 years ago, plus stem cell transplant, and even more so, at the recent ASH 2018 meeting doing post stem cell transplant, FLT3 inhibitor, when we do all of these three interventions, we’re now getting up to five year plus survival rates of 75%. So, this is amazing.
The patient who was 25% 12 years or 13 years ago, when we first identified this mutation, could today, if appropriately treated with FLT3 inhibitor transplant and FLT3 inhibitor maintenance, could be in a 75% long term survivor rate. So, tripling those outcomes. And similar things are being seen for other groups. For example, APL, acute promyelocytic leukemia, is one disease where we actually are able to treat these patients without chemotherapy. So, you can give a combination of ATRA arsenic, which gives you 95% cure rates.
So, the key now, and what I tell a lot of our community doctors, our fellows, other academicians is it’s not about just rushing in treatment, which has been the paradigm for 30 or 40 years, but more important, it identifies specific molecular mutations or cytogenetic changes and choose the best treatment because the impact of choosing the appropriate molecular or non-chemotherapy or antibody based treatment is, actually, much more than quick therapy. And I think that message now is going out.
And things are improving overall.
Beth:
Wow. And what I’m hearing are two things. Eight new drugs, however, those eight drugs are specifically going to be used, in regards to different mutations. And so, my question to you is it’s very obvious that genetic testing, for these mutations, is a huge puzzle piece to this. And could you talk a little bit about that. At what point can a patient get this genetic testing from the mutations. And if you could just speak to that because it just sounds that is essential?
Dr. Daver:
Yeah, absolutely. I think that is probably the No. 1 takeaway for both patients, caregivers, and physicians. So, the genetic testing should be done for all new AMLs at the time of diagnosis. And there are a number of different labs across the country, commercial labs, that are able to do this new genomics, foundations, hematologic, all of these are not insurance approved and covered.
Some of the larger academic centers have their own molecular testing analysis. The most important thing is that we should usually wait for these results before rushing into therapy. And just to give an example, when we see a new AML at MD Anderson, we will rush their cytogenetics and molecular testing. We’re looking for cytogenetics to rule in or rule out APL, acute promyelocytic leukemia because this can be treated without chemotherapy with 95% cure rates. The other big group we’re looking at is what we call core binding factor leukemia. These are a group of specific chromosomes associated leukemias.
And if you find those, then, that is the group or the addition of the antibody treatment called Gemtuzumab Ozogamicin or Mylotarg, which is FDA approved, can improve the survival rates by almost 20%, which is a huge amount on top of chemo. So, you don’t want to miss identifying this core binding factor of chromosomes. Then, if we don’t find one of these two, then, we rush our molecular panel.
We are fortunate. We get the molecular results in 48 hours. That’s one of the places in the country. There are a few other groups that are in the same range. But even in the commercial setting, I know for a fact that they’re able to get these results in six to seven days. So, I think it is actually possible and feasible. And even on some of the large trials we’ve done across 100 plus centers, we were able to safely wait for those results. Two molecular results were most important looking for our FLT3, if you find that mutation. We want to add the FLT3 inhibitor up front, and then, IDH1, IDH2 mutation.
And if you find those, we may consider, on a trial basis, adding IDH1, IDH2 mutations. And then, if none of those mutations or chromosome groups are identified, then, we will consider standard treatment. But even there, we have trials where we’re adding new drugs, which have shown very high activity like Venetoclax or Nivolumab or immune therapies to standard chemo. So, really, this is now personalized therapy. There are five clear subsets of AML that will have different treatment approaches.
And addition of the appropriate agent could improve your survival and cure rates from anywhere from 10 to 30 or 40%. So, I think this is quite important.
Beth:
It’s just amazing. And what I’m also picking up on, and what I’ve been told about AML, is that you need to move quick. This is, once diagnosed, time is of the essence, and especially with the different subtypes. So, we’re talking about genetic testing. And I really, really was very interested in hearing how it works and how quick it could be turned around. But what would you say – we very often hear, like in Steve’s case, it was his doctor who referred him to a local hematologist and then, eventually, to a specialist? Sometimes, we hear people being rushed to the hospital or going to their local doctor. But time is of the essence, in getting this genetic testing.
What advice do you give patients who, typically, might go to a local doctor, how to move along in this process and how to advocate for that genetic testing? Do you have any feedback on that?
Dr. Daver:
Yeah. I think there’s a fine balance. And that’s where it’s hard to make a generalized recommendation across the board because there are some AML patients who come to us who have a very high white count, more than 100,000, for example. They may have evidence of leukemia already infiltrating their liver or kidney, with organ abnormalities and lab changes. And in those patients, we may have to start treatment very early. But those are the minority. We’ve published, as other groups have looked at this, those make up about 5 to 10%. So, in the majority, it is, actually, a mindset change.
And this is something we’re doing a lot of education on, as well, is that that mindset of the sun should never set on AML. We have to treat right away, actually, was true, when you didn’t have other effective therapies that could be added that could change your outcome from 25% to 75%.
But today, in fact, I think it’s much more important to select the appropriate treatment or the addition of the appropriate molecular immune therapy than rushing into treatment. In fact, our group, as well as a number of other groups in the country, have published it. So, what we recommend, in general, is we get a new AML. We would admit those patients. I still think this is an inpatient disease. We would monitor them closely. We send, on the same day that we see them, a molecular chromosome panel. We ask it to be rushed. And then, usually, we can get these results in three to five days.
And I would wait to get those results because, based on those results, we may choose a FLT3 inhibitor. We may choose the antibody Gemtuzumab. We may choose IDH therapy. We may choose ATRA arsenic. So, I think, for most patients, what you could do, of course, you have to be careful when you’re discussing it with a physician, you don’t want to push on them too much. But I think it’s important to ask about molecular therapies, molecular trials, whether we could get the molecular information early, and how we could incorporate that.
I think, the good thing is we’re seeing, across the country, most of the physicians are taking this approach. And there is very intense education. But I still think it doesn’t hurt to ask about it and make sure that that testing is being done because I think it could make a huge difference in your outcome.
Beth:
Great. Wonderful feedback. Now, Leah Szumita, I’d like to bring you in on this conversation because we heard eight new medicines right now. That’s huge. And as Dr. Daver said, those are the results of clinical trials. And, recently, I heard that only about five to eight percent of adult cancer patients are participating nationwide, in the United States, in clinical trials. That seems like such a small number. And we depend on these patients to participate in these clinical trials to come out with these eight new meds.
There’s definitely a gap. And I’d like to hear your feedback about just that. And then, if you can go into – I’m going to ask you a few more questions about how people get involved in clinical trials. So, take us through that.
Leah:
Great, I will. So, I have to echo Dr. Daver’s sentiments about the importance of the genomic testing as well. And really, the new breakthrough in AML therapy is just a testament to the ongoing research. As he said, the research has been happening for 15 or 20 years. And we’re finally seeing the fruits of the labor. So, it’s encouraging. And that five to eight percent is low, but there’s room for improvement. And I think many different organizations have identified barriers to why these enrollment rates are so low. I will say that, of all of the clinical trials, somewhere between two and ten percent of clinical trials have to close because of low accrual rate.
So, there is just serious work to be done. I think, you can look at barriers in two different ways. There are patient barriers. There’s just a lack of awareness that clinical trials exist for all stages of diseases. So, many people believe that a clinical trial is only for those who have exhausted all other treatment options. And so, that’s actually not true. There are trials for every stage of disease. Previously untreated, newly diagnosed, relapse refractory, maintenance and remission. There are other barriers that people are afraid to be a guinea pig.
And so, I think, as healthcare providers, that’s our job to really educate that clinical trials are very controlled, closely monitored situations, provide education on the different phases and what those mean. There are very complex and stringent inclusion/exclusion criteria to clinical trials, which, in one way, can make it very difficult to understand, if you’re even eligible for a trial.
And so, that’s why clinical trial nurse navigators, such as myself, can really help patients and caregivers sort through that information. And then, sometimes, physicians aren’t aware of all of the trials that are out there either. And that is not to slight practitioners, but, again, it’s just an overwhelming amount of information. It takes time to stay on top of all of this research. It takes time to go through all of this research and all of the different protocols.
And so, it’s really important for patients and caregivers to have an advocate to try to identify what clinical trial is right for them.
Beth:
And so, through the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, you offer this service, if I understand you correctly. So, patients and their caregivers can reach out to your department and find out what is there for me. What comes to mind, also, I hear quite often, and we’ll get Dr. Daver’s opinion on this as well, in just a moment, but there seems to be roadblocks to people, not only I don’t want to be a guinea pig and understanding that piece of it, but also are there some financial hurdles, geographic hurdles?
I hear from patients, quite often, that I live so remotely. I’m in a rural area. How would I manage this? So, could you give a little feedback about that?
Leah:
Sure. First, with regards to the financial barriers, another common myth is that a clinical trial is free. And, unfortunately, it’s not. I would say that, often times, whatever is being studied, either a new drug or a combination of drugs that usually is covered by the sponsor of the trial. But the rest of the care needs to be billed to insurance. And then, there’s this third bucket of cost, which is the money it takes to get someone and their family members to and from all of these appointments, prolonged hospital stays away from home. So, those are significant financial barriers to participate, in a clinical trial.
There are resources out there to help navigate through some of these obstacles. And, again, I would encourage people to contact Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. We can help steer you to those resources. With regards to the geographic barrier, it’s correct. A lot of these large, academic medical centers are not in proximity to people in rural areas. And that is one key point of clinical trials that needs to be improved upon. And I think a great goal would be to get some of these later stage, later phase trials out into the community setting where they may not require quite as intensive monitoring.
But it can also be available to more patients and really diversify the patient populations.
Beth:
Great. Really great feedback. And then, Dr. Daver, I know that your center is very proactive with communicating clinical trials to patients. And could you just speak about that a little bit?
I know it must be overwhelming. You’re doing your research. You’re a clinician working with your patients and to keep on top of every clinical trial. But, again, I know that that’s something you’re very, very on top of. But could you give a little feedback about how you approach that?
Dr. Daver:
Yeah. As an AML expert, I would still say I’m not really aware of every AML trial, in the country. It’s not possible. There’s 200 or 300. And they keep changing every week. So, nobody really, at a clinician level, is going to be completely aware. Now, what we do know is the comorbid areas, the targeted groups, the particular mutational groups of trial, the new trials, and, of course, what’s looking more exciting, whether it’s in Phase 1, Phase 2, or Phase 3 development. I completely echo the sentiments. I think 100% of our efforts should be to get patients on trial. And, at MD Anderson, we have 180 trials in leukemia alone of which about 70 or 80 are in AML.
And, of course, this is on the higher end of the spectrum. But the focus is really to enroll people on trial. And, I think, what patients often, and I hear this almost every day in clinic, is that they’re concerned because, when you say a trial, they are thinking experimentation. I think there’s a big difference in experimentation and clinical investigation. So, our effort is always to offer trials that give you standard of therapy plus something. And, in fact, whenever we’re treating a frontline patient, no leukemia expert, least of all, in a very large academic center, is going to randomize the patient to something other than standard of care.
But what we do want to see is can we improve the standard of care. And that’s how all of these new drugs go approved. So, we were doing these trials with FLT3 inhibitors added to chemotherapy for almost 10 or 11 years at some of the large centers in the country. Similarly, with IDH inhibitors or Gemtuzumab. And I have many patients who, seven, eight, nine years ago, were able to go on these trials, many, many years before the FLT3 inhibitors approved and get those benefits.
So, the way we like to put it is to try to get you tomorrow’s therapy today. So, you’re going to get access, approximately, four to five years before a drug is approved. And almost always, you will get the standard treatment plus something. So, you’re not going to get less. You’re going to get more. Now, of course, all of the additions may not work. But the chance is that at least you’ll get the benefit of standard agent plus something. And a lot of times, when we explain that, then, patients, of course, say I would like the trial rather than just standard of care.
The other thing is, with the cost, although it’s true that the drugs may not all be free, at least you may get some or part of, in some cases, all of the drugs free. So, at least there is some incentive there because, a lot of times, people say the insurance covers it. But the cost of a lot of drugs is astronomical. And even if you’re paying just 5% for an average AML drug targeted therapy, which is somewhere between $15,000.00 to $20,000.00, that 5% can be $1,000.00 to $1,500.00 a month.
So, a lot of times, what I see from my patients is, when they go on our trial for FLT3 inhibitors and IDH inhibitors, and even the fact that they’re not paying their co-pay, often offsets their cost of coming to MD Anderson or coming to Dana Farber or Sloan Kettering or whatever it may be. So, I really think that one should definitely talk to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, other major organizations, so that they can find out what trials are there. And many times, patients say, well, don’t think there’s a trial for me, or their local physician may not be aware.
And I can guarantee you, almost 99 to 100% of the time, there will be not just one but many, many trials that are available to you. So, I think that little bit of effort, emails, phone calls can go a long way.
Beth:
Great feedback. And Leah, going back to you, excuse me – I’m sorry. I just need to stand up a moment. I’m in a room that decided the lights would go off. But you can all hear me. Speaking to you, and I’m getting towards our lights, can you talk about what questions someone can ask their doctor, in regard to clinical trials?
What are those important questions?
Leah:
Absolutely. So, there are so many of them. And one of the things that my group of nurses and myself do is really provide people with education about the basics of clinical trials and then, the language and the questions they can use, when they go back to their provider. And then, also, when they go to make that connection with the clinical trial group. So, the list is long. I would say first and foremost, asking what the risks and benefits are. Many times, in a clinical trial, there are different requirements about how often someone might come to and from the site, what the finances might be related to that.
Also, a lot of studies or drugs used in studies have been used in other studies. So, asking if there are any early results or any results from prior studies using those medications is important.
And asking about how this may affect quality of life, all of those different kinds of questions. There’s a very long list. We do have a fabulous clinical trials booklet that patients and caregivers can obtain that have lists of questions. And we always encourage people to read through that material as well. But knowledge is power. So, the more knowledge and research someone does, and bringing someone with them to these appointments to really take notes because it can be so difficult to absorb all of this information, would be some of my recommendations.
Beth:
Wonderful. Great feedback. So, Steve, I’d like to circle back to you now. You have this overwhelming, very intense journey. Where did you get information about AML? Where did you get support? We hear that so often, when someone is diagnosed, and they have to handle and make decisions fast, what kind of resources did you utilize. And tell our viewers out there, so the can understand what to do and how to do it.
Steve:
Well, one thing I did not do is go on the internet and scare myself half to death. I trusted my doctors. It did happen so quickly that I was in treatment before I even understood the nature of my disease. So, for better or worse, I was getting on that train and going wherever it was going to take me. But I had a great team of social workers. I had great nurses. My oncologist was excellent in spending as much time with me as I wanted. And so, it was a gradual kind of learning curve for me. And the fact that the early treatment went pretty well, obviously, helped give me confidence.
And the same thing, when I went down to the University of Minnesota Medical Center. They gave me a very thorough explanation of what was going on, recommended the stem cell transplant. I had a colleague whose father actually worked in this area decades ago.
And I talked with him. He stressed the importance of getting a second opinion. So, I was able to go to the Mayo Clinic, which is about an hour and a half drive from where I live. And I talked, first, to a hematologist who said I can tell you some things, but you should come back and talk to the transplant experts here. So, I did that as well. So, between my initial oncologist, my transplant oncologist, my second opinions at the Mayo Clinic, I was pretty confident that not that it would all work out, but this was the best path to follow. And as I followed that path, I did get invited to a clinical trial.
Just from a patient’s perspective, some years ago, I was the caregiver for my mother, as she was struggling and eventually dying of breast cancer. And her oncologist wanted to put her in a clinical trial. And I was very suspicious, and wondering is she not going to get the kind of care that she needs because you want to use her as a subject in a study. And I declined that study. And some years later, I find myself being invited to join a study. And I asked a lot of questions, especially when I saw that 22-page consent form.
That’s pretty daunting. There’s a lot there, and there’s a lot to ask about, and I did. And people patiently answered my questions. And I just came to realize, essentially, in my case, the trial wasn’t even close to experimental. What they were saying is this is how we’re going to treat you regardless. But if you’re willing to do the study, we’re going to track the results. And that can help people down the line. So, at that point, it seemed almost like a no brainer. And I could have chosen my brother as a donor or a stem cell as a donor. Instead, I went into a study that randomized me. And I went into the stem cell, and it turned out just fine.
But they said the five-year survival rates for either path are about the same, so that’s why we’re doing the study to try to figure out what the different pathways are to that outcome and when something will benefit patients in the future. So, at that point, it just seemed like a reasonable thing to do. Helping people understand that you’re going to get the best treatment they can give you regardless, even though you’re in the study. I think that’s, for many patients, the key point. And it sounds like Leah and her folks are working on that angle.
That’s really important for patients.
Beth:
Wow, that is fabulous feedback. And if you could say – what I’m hearing you say is that you got a lot of support from, it sounds like, the hospital where you received your care. That there was you mentioned social worker, and they sounded like they were really there to give you support. Would you agree that everyone really worked together to help you through this journey?
Steve:
They did, both the professionals and circle of friends and colleagues. Of course, those email correspondences, as I said, I was getting multiple responses to every email that I sent out, from various people. Sometimes funny, sometimes dark humor, which I especially appreciate. Thank you, Dave, from Milwaukee. So, a variety of things that came in, people prayed for me. I’m not especially religious, but whatever they wanted to do was fine with me. So, the writing, again, was therapeutic.
I practiced a lot of mindfulness and meditation and yoga. I was a very active patient. I walked the halls five miles a day. When I couldn’t leave my room, I was on a treadmill. I just needed to do things that sort of kept my body up and moving. And I think that really helped my recovery. I had nurses tell me, at one point, I was doing better than any other patient, at that stage in treatment. I’m not bragging about it, but I think, again, initial good reactions made it easy to get in this upward spiral. I exercised, I ate as well as I could. And I’ve seen patients have a bad time. And they’re kind of in a downward spiral.
And it’s really hard to reverse that. If you don’t feel good enough to teat, if you don’t feel good enough to exercise, it’s really hard to get out of that box. And so, anything you can do or anything nurses or social workers can do to help patients be proactive, be as active as possible, ask lots of questions, in whatever fashion suits their needs. Try and tell your story, whether it’s Caring Bridge, or emails, or verbal recording of what’s going on, I think there’s a great therapy to just trying to put together, from a patient’s perspective, what the hell is going on here and what’s happening to me and how might it turn out.
And those are some of the things that helped me get through.
Beth:
That is just great feedback. And Dr. Daver, I’m picking up that Steve has just an amazing attitude. And what kind of feedback do you give about that? These patients, these wonderful people, their lives have been turned upside down. As you tell us, it’s just very quickly, they’re living one life and now another. How much do you see, listening to Steve’s attitude and trying to be proactive and advocate for himself, do you feel that’s an impact on overall success in treatment and moving forward?
Dr. Daver:
Yes, absolutely. I think that the attitude plays a major role. But I think a few things that Steve said are very important.
One is that he did seek out second opinions. He did go to Mayo Clinic, a very large academic center. He got additional input. He learned about clinical trials and outcomes. And a lot of times, we have patients who may contact us or physicians from outside who contact us or come to us. And sometimes, we may not have something different to offer. There may be a standard treatment. A lot of times, the peace of mind of knowing that you have consulted with a large academic center, one of the top centers, whether it’s Mayo or MD Anderson or Sloan Kettering, whichever it may be, often helps a lot.
And then, there may be other times when we actually do say, and this happens quite frequently, that, actually, we have a trial that I think will be a better FLT3 inhibitor or better IDH inhibitor or a better antibody. And this is what I would do, if I was in your place, or if I had a relative in your place. So, I think that helps your peace of mind and your mental framework. And the second thing is – and that’s not something we can control is how you do to the initial treatment.
If you have good responses, if you tolerate it well, then, of course, we do see that those patients are always more optimistic, have a better mental framework, it helps. But I also see that there are some patients who come in, with a very negative framework. And that’s where I think learning that there is so much new progress, that there are so many options, not only in the frontline setting, in the relapse setting, in the maintenance setting, even after post-transplant relapse. We have things that, potentially, could cure patients, which we didn’t have even five years ago.
So, I think knowing that there’s a huge amount of progress, that the cure rates have doubled, tripled, in some cases, in elderly AML and FLT3 AML. And no longer having AML is the end of the world. In fact, in our most recent data update that we are going to publish soon, we see that, in the young patient, 65 and below, the overall survival, if you gave all patients who visited MD Anderson is about 66%. So, 23 patients actually had a long-term cure.
And people are shocked, even physicians I know of in the ICU and ER settings, don’t realize this fact. In elderly AML, it’s tougher, but we are going from 10% to almost 45 or 50% cure rates in patients 65 plus. So, I think, once people hear these numbers, they completely change their mind and are much more optimistic. But getting that information across to patients, to caregivers, to make them do the referral or make them consider treatment, I think, is the first big hurdle that we have to kind of overcome.
Beth:
Wow. And that is just very right on target. So, I’d like to shift gears a little bit. We do have a few questions we have time for. And Dr. Daver, the first question I’d like to get your feedback on, and forgive me with the pronunciation of the actual medication, I’ll try my best. So, this question comes in, what is the role of Venetoclax, if any, in treating AML. And when might that be FDA approved, from what you might know about this?
Dr. Daver:
So, the Venetoclax is probably one of the most exciting drugs in AML, especially elderly AML. In elderly AML, it is the most exciting drug that we have had probably forever. So, we used to treat elderly AML, meaning above 65 years of age. And these are hugely people not just by age, but also based on the physician’s review who are considered not fit for intensive chemo. They may have kidney problems, liver disease, poor performance status, immobility. And so, we cannot give the high chemo, the 3 + 7 that Steve got. And we have to use lower intensity therapy.
And we used to use Azacytidine alone, with the response rate of about 20 to 25%- and 3-year survival of about 15 to 20%. And now, we’ve done a study using Azacytidine in combination with Venetoclax where the response rates were 73%. So, going from 25% to 73% not doubling or really tripling, and that the survival is now 46 or 48% going from 15 to 18%.
So, that’s a huge, dramatic shift, three times response rate, three times of the potential cure rates. So, I think, right now, we believe that Azacytidine and Venetoclax really should be the standard of care for elderly AML, if they’re not going to get induction chemo. And, in fact, it was FDA approved very recently. So, three weeks ago, in fact, right before the ASH meeting, end of November, Azacytidine in combination with Venetoclax, as well as low dose Cytarabine and combination with Venetoclax were FDA approved.
And I think, now, with the approval, although we were doing this even before the approval, no elderly AML patient should get Azacytidine or low dose Cytarabine alone. I really think addition of Venetoclax now is the standard of care, triple response rate, triple survival. There’s no reason not to do that.
Beth:
Wow. That is an amazing shift and such good news for our elderly patients. That is great. I do have another question. And I believe it’s targeted for you as well, Dr. Daver.
For those young folks, under 35, who relapse quickly, within about 100 days after MUD allo transplant for AML, M5, no mutation target, what will be a sustainable way to buy time and bridge for that next transplant. Could you talk a little bit about that?
Dr. Daver:
So, that’s a very tough scenario. Relapsing post-transplant itself is a very high-risk feature. It, basically, indicates that disease is aggressive and may not respond to further chemotherapy or transplant. But relapsing early post-transplant, which we usually consider within 100 or 120 days is actually quite an adverse feature. So, for those patients, I think the best chance is if we can find a targetable mutation. So, we will be looking for FLT3 or IDH1, IDH2 mutations. If we find those, then, I think we do have some chance with either a FLT3 inhibitor alone or, more likely, in a FLT3 inhibitor, in combination with low intensity therapy.
And there are a number of these agents either approved, but I would actually go for a trial where we’re combining either FLT3 inhibitors or IDH1, IDH2 inhibitors with other exciting agents like Azacytidine and Venetoclax. I think that will be the best shot of getting a long-term remission, potentially, a second transplant. Of course, there are a lot of caveats and variables. And you have to look at the individual patient to make that determination. The other group of therapies that you could use, if we don’t find the FLT3 or IDH because only about 30 to 40% of patients will have one of these three mutations, is immunotherapies.
And these can work really well, especially in the post-transplant relapse setting. And we have drugs such as antibody drug conjugates. These are antibodies that carry a toxin and can attack the leukemia cells. Or what we call immune check point antibodies. They’re also agents that activate your own immune system post-transplant to fight against tumor. And with these, we have seen some very exciting activity, specifically, in the post-transplant relapse.
And a lot of these are all under clinical trial setting because the antibodies and the immune checkpoints are not yet approved. They may be in the next couple of years. So, I think this would be an ideal scenario to find the academic center close to you and try to consider getting into one of the trials, either targeted therapy or immune therapy.
Beth:
And another question would be do you see post-transplant relapse more in specific mutations? Are those with specific subtypes of AML?
Dr. Daver:
Yes, we do. So, we see the post-transplant relapse most common in what we consider the adverse risk AML. So, the adverse risk AML are the patients we definitely take to transplant. But, unfortunately, even after transplant, they remain the group that have a high risk of relapse. So, these are patients who have what we call TP53, one of the worse mutations. They will often have a high risk of relapse post-transplant or chromosome changes like deletion 7, deletion 5, deletion 17, also another high-risk group.
And the third group is what we call secondary AML. So, there are two ways you could get AML. You could have spontaneous AML, most common. We have a patient, no prior history of chemo radiation, other cancers, who comes in with acute diagnosis of AML. But then, there’s another group making about 20 to 30% called secondary AML. So, these are people who have prior breast cancer, colon cancer, bladder cancer, and got either chemotherapy or radiation for that. Or people who had prior MDS, which is an AML precursor and then, developed AML.
And these people who have secondary AML are much more risky and also more prone to relapse post-transplant. There are a few new drugs like Vyxeos that can work well, in this situation. But, in general, these are probably the high risk molecular or morphological groups that could relapse post-transplant.
Beth:
Very interesting. Well, I so appreciate all of the wonderful information and feedback that our guests have provided today.
And the timing is great. Just coming off of ASH has been extremely encouraging, Dr. Daver, with you sharing all of these wonderful new eight new drugs and insight that’s going on. And, Leah, your feedback has just been phenomenal. And really, I believe it’s going to ease people’s concerns and fears about clinical trials, and between you and Dr. Daver speaking about the clinical trials, why they’re so essential, and they’re doable. And, Steve, your feedback, not only about clinical trials, but your journey is phenomenal. And I hope our viewers look forward to seeing information.
We may not have mentioned this. Steve has written a book soon to be published about his journey. He has some very interesting feedback that we just didn’t have enough time to share on today’s webinar.
So, thank you, again, to our guests and our sponsors. And a replay will be completed soon. And you’ll receive it via your email. So, our audience, please look forward to that. And remember, be your own advocate. Thank you.
We thank Celgene Corporation, Daiichi Sankyo, Genentech, Helsinn, and Novartis for their support.
