They are called target therapies: intelligent and targeted drugs that allow people with acute promyelocytic leukemia to survive in 90 percent of cases, when until a few years ago the survival from this disease was 10 percent. Or the revolutionary Car-T therapy, applied to treat acute lymphoblastic leukemia, relapsing or refractory to other therapies. The fight against blood cancers is at a turning point: and it is, in particular, on the front of the treatment of leukemia that the most modern therapies mark a revolution in the therapeutic approach: these are the results that emerged in Genoa at the Post Atlanta conference. was concluded in recent days, and which saw over five hundred hematologists from all over Italy discuss the most important progresses of the meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH).
Ten years without cancer, thanks to CAR-T cells
by Anna Lisa Bonfranceschi
CAR-T therapies: results in children with leukemia and lymphomas
A precision medicine, therefore, and in many cases increasingly chemo-free: based on intelligent drugs to target only the diseased cells, drastically reducing toxicity. One above all is Car-T therapy. “It consists of taking the patient’s lymphocytes and arming them in the laboratory and re-infusing them into patients, with the hope that these cells will not only be able to detect, but also kill leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma cells,” he explains. Angelo Michele Carellaformer director of Hematology at San Martino di Genova and heir of Professor Alberto Marmont, currently a hematologist consultant also in Milan and Rome, coordinator of the meeting together with Pier Luigi ZinzaniProfessor of Hematology at the Lorenzo and Ariosto Seràgnoli Institute at the University of Bologna: “Long-lasting results have already been obtained, as well as healing in over 40 percent of children considered refractory, or more times relapsed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia or lymphomas not aggressive Hodgkins “.
Oncohematology, therapies for each individual patient
by Dario Rubino
Advances in acute promyelocytic leukemia
One of the neoplasms that has seen the prognosis revolutionize thanks to precision therapy is acute promyelocytic leukemia: “Until a few years ago the chance of surviving was less than 10 percent – explains Carella – today more than 90 percent of patients, thanks to a non-chemotherapy treatment based on two drugs – arsenic trioxide combined with all-trans-retinoic acid, a derivative of vitamin A – is able to bring about recovery ”. Another success of the research, achieved by the Italian Group of Adult Haematological Diseases (Gimema) founded in 1982 by Professor Franco Mandelli, concerns positive philadelphia acute lymphoblastic leukemia. “A recent study in which patients with this disease were treated at diagnosis – explains Carella – used non-chemotherapeutic drugs: a therapy based on cortisone and a tyrosine kinase inhibitor called dasatinib. A combination – concludes the expert – capable of allowing the achievement of complete remissions in over 90 percent of cases “.
Blood cancers: so Car-T therapy extends survival even in severe forms
by Tiziana Moriconi
Image credits: AhmadArdity via Pixabay