Current Therapeutic Strategies for FLT3-Mutated Acute Myeloid Leukemia: A Narrative Review

Patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) typically present with unexplained weight loss, fatigue, and other nonspecific and varied symptoms, and are diagnosed by the aggressive onset of symptoms and a peripheral blood smear with a high proportion of myeloblasts. Patients with AML may have a variety of mutations, but mutations in FMS-like tyrosine kinase 3 (FLT3) are prognostic of outcomes. Notably, only four human AML cell lines express an internal duplication in FLT3, while two human AML cell lines contain an activating mutation in the juxtamembrane domain. A variety of other cell lines express mutated FLT3, including lymphoid leukemia cell lines. Several drugs have been developed to target mutated FLT3, but only three have been FDA-approved. In this review, we summarize the human myeloid leukemia cell lines that express mutated FLT3 and the effect of several drugs on these cell lines. Our aim in this review is to provide clinicians with a basic science understanding of human myeloid leukemia cell lines and to provide scientific researchers with the clinical implications of FLT3 signaling inhibition.