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Acute Leukemia Forum 2000, Advances and Controversies in the Therapy of Acute Myelogenous Leukemia

Targeted AML therapy: new biologic paradigms and therapeutic opportunities

Leukemia volume 15, pages 690–694 (2001)Cite this article

With rapid scientific advances in human genomics, proteomics, experimental therapeutics, and bioinformatics, the ability to optimize therapy for acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) and to tailor therapy for individual AML patients will become a reality. Such a targeted approach must not only focus on the biologic and genetic perturbations in leukemic cells that alter critical cellular pathways, but also on individual host genetic and biologic factors that predict for response or undue toxicity to specific therapeutic agents.

In terms of leukemia genetic markers, a number of new ‘real-time’ technologies are being developed that allow for the rapid identification of genetic and biologic abnormalities in leukemic cells at diagnosis, thereby facilitating patient stratification to different treatment regimens. Quantitative disease monitoring of the precise leukemia cell burden during therapy and in remission will also likely facilitate further treatment stratification and direct appropriate therapeutic intervention. Such quantitative disease monitoring tools are also likely to be useful in determining the effectiveness of new biologically directed therapies and new agents in early, as well as late phase clinical trials. New studies of global gene expression patterns using genomics and microarray approaches will also hopefully facilitate new diagnostic algorithms and define potential therapeutic targets, particularly when such technologies can be translated to functional assays that assess the functional state of critical biologic pathways in leukemic cells. Finally, the emerging field of pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics promises to identify risk-promoting and risk-modifying alleles for AML etiology and to determine those genetic polymorphisms that will be most useful in defining host response and toxicity to specific agents in AML patients.

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  1. University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center and Cancer Center, Albuquerque, NM, USA

    CL Willman

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Willman, C. Targeted AML therapy: new biologic paradigms and therapeutic opportunities. Leukemia 15, 690–694 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.leu.2402087

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