Interpreting data in AML

Steady progress has been made in the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia since the discovery of daunorubicin in the 1960s. Advances in new drug activity have contributed greatly to that and are responsible for curing about 20 percent of patients diagnosed today. Progress in supportive care has been equally important; broad-spectrum antibiotics are now allowing patients to survive long enough to receive an adequate course of chemotherapy, to which most patients respond with a complete remission. More recently, the development of colony-stimulating factors and their safe use during induction therapy in high-risk patients has allowed greater numbers of patients to be adequately treated during the initial phase of therapy. The most significant recent advance in treatment for acute leukemia is the demonstration that certain leukemic syndromes respond dramatically to specific interventions that are substantially less active in other leukemic syndromes. The challenge for the near future is to understand the mechanisms behind these empiric observations and, for the long-term, to learn to use such information to design molecularly targeted therapy for specific leukemic syndromes that are characterized by unique molecular features. Antisense oligonucleotide therapeutic research is one first step in that direction.