Acute Myeloid Leukemia and New Paths to Treatment

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Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a blood cancer that starts in the bone marrow. While chemotherapy is the most common treatment, recent developments have been made targeting specific mutations of the leukemia with alternate therapies, such as oral pills. Oncologist Firas El Chaer, MD, explains the disease and the types of care available at UVA.

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I'm Firas El Chaer. I focus on acute leukemias and chronic leukemias.

Acute myeloid leukemia is a form of blood cancer that affects the stem cells and our bone marrow.

Acute myeloid leukemia is most commonly treated with chemotherapy. However, over the course of the past few years, we have come to know that these leukemias have a lot of specific mutations, and some of those mutations can be targeted with very specific therapies. Some of those therapies are actually oral pills.

The first step is remission. The second step is, hopefully, a cure. Remission entails that the level of the leukemia cells in their body is at a very low level. In addition, their blood counts should have recovered at a point where they are independent of transfusions. This is what we call remission.

Acute leukemias, particularly acute myeloid leukemia, would be better treated at a large academic center because we have a whole team that can address those patients and their needs. The team usually consists of a pharmacist, a physician, a nurse, a care coordinator, a social worker, and many other members of the team.

Some of those patients will require bone marrow or stem cell transplant. Instead of having to go to another institution, we perform that procedure here.

Another reason why these patients would potentially have more options here at UVA because we have clinical trials addressing acute leukemias.

When patients with acute myeloid leukemia get diagnosed, they feel that this the end of the story. Providing them with that glimpse of hope and showing them that there's light at the end of the tunnel is extremely important.