Promising AML Treatment to Initiate Phase III Trial at Moffitt

Moffitt Cancer Center researchers say clinical trials for a new experimental drug to treat acute myeloid leukemia (AML) are very promising. Patients treated with CPX-351, a combination of the chemotherapeutic drugs cytarabine and daunorubicin, are showing better responses than patients treated with the standard drug formulation.

“Acute myeloid leukemia is an aggressive blood cancer with very low rates of treatment success, especially in older patients,” explained Jeffrey Lancet, M.D., senior member of the Department of Malignant Hematology and chief of the Leukemia Section at Moffitt.

AML is diagnosed in approximately 19,000 people in the United States each year and results in over 10,000 deaths annually.Many patients with AML are older and have additional medical conditions, which makes treatment difficult. Only 50 percent of patients respond to existing therapies and the average survival time is less than 1 year. Therefore, researchers are trying to find new treatment options to increase survival.

The phase 2 study included 126 newly diagnosed AML patients from 18 cancer centers across the United States and Canada.The patients received the standard chemotherapeutic agents, cytarabine and daunorubicin, or the novel drug combination CPX-351.

Read the press release here: http://bit.ly/1ikYcai

Source: Moffitt Cancer Center