Dr. Marlise Luskin, a specialist in the Adult Leukemia Program at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, explains an innovative trial that combines the BCL2 inhibitor, venetoclax with chemotherapy for older patients with ALL. For more information about this trial, visit: https://www.dana-farber.org/clinical-trials2/detail/16-648/
we're lucky here Dana Farber to have a number of clinical trials for patients with L. L. It's a rare disease but we're really focused on improving treatment for this rare disease. And this is a center where we have the resources to do that. Uh So we have a lot of clinical trials for patients who have different ages and different types of A. L. L. But one trial we're particularly excited about is a trial we have open for adults who are uh with L. L. who are 60 years and older. And this is a group of patients that have historically had a challenging time with traditional chemotherapy when um when we give traditional chemotherapy to these patients, they don't respond as well as younger patients and they have a lot of side effects. And so this is a group that has been in particular need of of new approaches, luckily uh scientists around the world, but including here at dana Farber have really given us the tools to to come up with a better better approaches. And the approach we're taking for for this group of patients is to decrease the dose of chemotherapy uh to decrease the amount of side effects and add a novel treatment. A new treatment uh to uh sort of enhance the ability of that treatment to work. And this is a trial combining veneta Clacks, a drug that helps helps when combined with chemotherapy helps that chemotherapy work combining veneta clocks with hyper mini hyper CVD which is a dose reduced chemotherapy because banana clacks is uh such a well tolerated drug when given with this dose reduced chemo. Were able to get what we're seeing is that we're able to get response rates that are higher than with traditional chemotherapy. But with les chemo, unless the side effects. So patients are getting into deeper emissions. Something called called measurable residual disease negative emissions, meaning we can't detect the disease even at low levels. And we're seeing that patients are able to either move on to something called stem cell transplant, which they might not have been eligible before, or for patients who aren't able to bridge to that therapy are able to stay in remission on the chemotherapy for a prolonged period of time. And we've already participated are already conducted a Phase One study of this regimented and our early results suggest that it's well tolerated and that the response rates and patients who haven't had prior treatment are are really promising. And that promising early early results has prompted us to uh take this trial into it was called the phase two setting and be able to treat more patients to learn more about the safety and efficacy of this regimen. This. This trial is available to patients with newly diagnosed l where 60 years and older with B cell or T cell ale without the philadelphia chromosome, Patients with Philadelphia chromosome have a different route of treatment because of that particular abnormality. But any adult 16 older with leukemia without that abnormality would be a potential patient for this trial. And we'd be happy to see anybody in that situation, uh, to screen them for for eligibility.
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