EBMT 2018 | Novel therapies for treating relapsed/refractory ALL

So relapsed/refractory acute lymphoblastic leukemia is a very difficult disease to treat. The long-term survival historically has been only about five to eight percent, so clearly new therapies are warranted and fortunately there’s a lot of new development on the rise.

The first drug that was developed and approved is a drug called blinatumomab which is a bi specific antibody where the patient’s t-cells are brought to the cancer cells, the lymphoblasts and and are activated and therefore attack the the cancer. And that’s shown to be very effective as a single agent but still new approaches are warranted.

Inotuzumab is a new drug that was just approved. It is a monoclonal antibody drug conjugate which can be safely given as a single agent or even in combination with remission rates in the 80% range and more than half of those patients achieve a very low level of disease called MRD negativity. And then of course the development of car t-cells so it’s a wide range of options that our patients are going to have and hopefully the improvement for these patients with relapsed and refractory disease.