Source: Eur Urol  |  Posted 5 years ago

By Ed Susman

ATLANTA, G.A. -- June 5, 2006 -- Long-term outcomes of patients with chronic myelogenous leukemia treated with imatinib (Gleevec) therapy show that the longer they remain on treatment, the greater are their chances of achieving complete cytogenetic response, researchers said here at the American Society of Clinical Oncology 2006 Annual Meeting (ASCO).

Brian Druker, MD, professor of medicine, Oregon Health Sciences University, Portland, Oregon, said that 89.4% of the patients who have remained on first-line imatinib are still alive 5 years after starting treatment.

Imatinib targets the mutated bcr/abl oncogene in chronic myelogenous leukemia.

After 12 months, 69% of patients on first-line therapy with imatinib had achieved a complete cytogenetic response, Dr. Druker noted. By 2 years, that cumulative percentage had climbed to 80%. It reached 84% at 3 years and 87% at 5 years, he said.

"These figures indicate that patients who keep taking imatinib continue to improve," he said.

The overall survival of 89.4% at 5 years exceeds that of all other therapies for chronic myelogenous leukemia, he said. About 10.6% of the 553 people in the original study have died, but just 4.6% died of leukemia.

Dr. Druker said that 69% of the patients who were originally assigned to imatinib have remained on the drug as first-line therapy compared with 3% of the patients who were originally assigned to first-line interferon plus cytarabine, the treatment of choice when Gleevec came on the scene.

In contrast to other long-term treatments, the overall risk of progression to advanced disease among the imatinib patients is low and is associated with the degree of response, regardless of when that response was achieved, he noted.

"Late responses to imatinib occur and responses are durable," said Dr. Druker in a press briefing on June 4[^]th[].

"These long-term data," he said, "confirm that imatinib is the standard first-line therapy for all chronic myelogenous leukemia patients."

[[]Presentation title: Long-Term Benefits of Imatinib (IM) for Patients Newly Diagnosed With Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia in Chronic Phase (CML-CP): The 5-Year Update From the IRIS Study. Abstract 6506[]]