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INTERIM Confirms 5-Year Efficacy of Intermittent Imatinib in CML

There has been substantial interest in intermittent or other alternative scheduling of tyrosine kinase inhibitors in treatment for CML. The success of the drugs has been remarkable, but because of that success and the relative young age of many CML patients, many are forced to take the drugs for many years and even decades. This carries high financial burden, as well as increasing chances of non-compliance. Affirming the safety of intermittent scheduling could ease some of those concerns in CML patients.

The phase II trial included 76 patients who were at least 65 years old, and all had a stable complete cytogenetic response (CCgR) lasting more than 2 years. The intermittent imatinib regimen was a 1 month on, 1 month off schedule. -

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http://www.cancernetwork.com/chronic-myeloid-leukemia/interim-confirms-5...

Despite the early termination of a phase III trial due to safety concerns, an analysis suggests that ponatinib offers improved efficacy over imatinib in patients with newly diagnosed chronic-phase chronic myeloid leukemia (CP-CML). That improvement comes at the expense of higher rates of adverse events, according to the EPIC trial.

EPIC was a multinational, multicenter, randomized, open-label trial. It included 307 patients, with a median follow-up of only 5.1 months. The trial was terminated in October 2013 after a signal for increased risk of arterial thrombotic events was observed in the ponatinib treatment arm. Because of that early termination, none of the predefined endpoints could be thoroughly analyzed, but researchers presented other relevant data based on a cutoff of April 1, 2014. The analysis, led by Jeffrey H. Lipton, MD, PhD, of Princess Margaret Cancer Centre at the University of Toronto in Canada, was presented at the American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting in San Francisco in December 2014.

See more at:

http://www.cancernetwork.com/chronic-myeloid-leukemia/ponatinib-shows-pr...