Ciência e terapia do câncer

Current Management Approaches of Chronic Myeloid Leukemia

Abstract

Atalay Mulu Fentie, Minyahi Alebachew Woldu, Belete Ayalneh Worku

Chronic myeloid leukemia is a slowly progressive and clonal myeloproliferative disorder characterized by the presence of Philadelphia chromosome. Even if the global incidence is unknown, CML accounts for 15% to 20% cases of adult leukemia’s in USA and is predominantly the disease of adults. It has three phases reflecting the grade of malignancy; chronic phase, accelerated phase and blast crisis phase. Initial diagnosis and monitoring of treatment response is based on hematologic, cytogenetic and molecular assessments that need to be regularly checked. The treatment in each phase had undergone a profound progress over a relatively short period of time, starting with arsenic therapy, radiotherapy, allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, recombinant interferon-alfa, busulfan, and hydroxyurea, and more recently with the tyrosine kinase inhibitors. Among tyrosine kinase inhibitors national comprehensive cancer network puts imatinib, dastinib and nilotinib as category 1 recommendation for initial treatment of chronic phase chronic myeloid leukemia. Second generation tyrosine kinase inhibitors; nilotinib, dasatinib, bosutinib and ponatinib had shown inducing higher rates of early optimal responses, although their impact on long-term overall survival remains to be determined. There are also drugs for the treatment of chronic myeloid leukemia such as histone deacetylase inhibitors, proteasome inhibitors and farnesyl transferase inhibitors which are under investigation. In addition to these vaccines are under investigation as a part of treatment for chronic myeloid leukemia which still needs further research.