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

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

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

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Transcript:

Dr. Mims:

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

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

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

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

Comprehensive Hematological Cancer Centers

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AML Genetic Testing: Could It Lead to a Targeted Treatment for You?

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.