Defining therapy goals for major molecular remission in chronic myeloid leukemia patients

This study aimed to define therapy goals for major molecular remission in chronic myeloid leukemia.

This study concluded that the optimal time for major molecular remission was 12-15 months and if not achieved at this point a change in treatment is needed.

Major molecular remission (MMR) is an important therapy goal in chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). MMR is when the levels of BCR-ABL1 gene are reduced. This gene is associated with cancer. Failure to achieve MMR is not currently defined as an indicator of treatment failure.

It was not known after what time physicians can use MMR to define treatment failure.

This study involved use of the results of the randomized CML study IV. This study involved 1551 patients with CML who were treated with imatinib (Gleevec). Data from this study was used to estimate the time to define treatment failure in CML patient without MMR under imatinib therapy. Patients from the CML study IV were divided into learning and validation samples. Every month, the risk for different molecular remission status’ were estimated.

Patients who reached MMR at 2.5 years had a 72% decreased risk of disease progression than those who did not.

In the validation sample, there was an advantage for progression free survival (PFS) for patients in MMR.

The optimal time to predict PFS in patients with MMR was at 2.5 years.

The optimal response time for 1% BCR-ABL at about 12-15 months was confirmed. It was demonstrated that the earlier the MMR is achieved the higher is the chance to attain deep molecular response later.

This study concluded that the optimal time for MMR was 12-15 months and if not achieved at this point a change in treatment is needed.

Consult your physician about MMR in CML.