Treatments for Acute Myeloid Leukemia | Bmt Abroad

Treatments for Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Treatment of acute Myeloid leukemia depends on several factors, including the subtype of the disease, your age, your overall health and your preferences.

In general, treatment falls into two phases:

Remission induction therapy: You’ll get high doses of chemotherapy to destroy as many leukemia cells as possible. You may need to stay in the hospital for 3 to 5 weeks so your doctor can see how you’re doing and treat you for any side effects of chemotherapy. There are targeted therapy drugs as well.

After treatment, your bone marrow should start to make healthy blood cells. Your doctor will take a bone marrow sample to see if any leukemia cells are left in your blood. If no leukemia cells are visible, doctors call that being “in remission.” You’ll still need to go through post-remission therapy to help you stay in remission.

Post-remission therapy: Post-remission therapy uses more treatments to wipe out any cancer cells that might have been left behind after chemotherapy. You have three options:

Chemotherapy. You may get several cycles of high-dose chemotherapy once a month.
Allogenic (from a donor) stem cell transplant
Autologous (from yourself) stem cell transplant

Therapies used in these phases include:

Chemotherapy: Chemotherapy is the major form of remission induction therapy, though it can also be used for consolidation therapy. Chemotherapy uses chemicals to kill cancer cells in your body.

People with AML generally stay in the hospital during chemotherapy treatments because the drugs destroy many normal blood cells in the process of killing leukemia cells. If the first cycle of chemotherapy doesn’t cause remission, it can be repeated.

Targeted therapy: Targeted therapy uses drugs that attack specific vulnerabilities within your cancer cells. The drug midostaurin (Rydapt) stops the action of an enzyme within the leukemia cells and causes the cells to die. Midostaurin is only useful for people whose cancer cells have the FLT3 mutation. This drug is administered in pill form.

Other drug therapy: Arsenic trioxide (Trisenox) and all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA) are anti-cancer drugs that can be used alone or in combination with chemotherapy for remission induction of a certain subtype of AML called promyelocytic leukemia. These drugs cause leukemia cells with a specific gene mutation to mature and die, or to stop dividing.

Bone marrow transplant: A bone marrow transplant, also called a stem cell transplant, may be used for consolidation therapy. A bone marrow transplant helps re-establish healthy stem cells by replacing unhealthy bone marrow with leukemia-free stem cells that will regenerate healthy bone marrow.

Prior to a bone marrow transplant, you receive very high doses of chemotherapy or radiation therapy to destroy your leukemia-producing bone marrow. Then you receive infusions of stem cells from a compatible donor (allogeneic transplant).

You can also receive your own stem cells (autologous transplant) if you were previously in remission and had your healthy stem cells removed and stored for a future transplant.

Make an Appointment