ASH Annual Meeting 2012—Chronic Myeloid Leukemia Update

At the recent ASH meeting, updated 4 year results on the use of the second-generation tyrosine kinase inhibitor nilotinib compared with imatinib were presented and they demonstrated superiority in achieving faster and deeper molecular responses for nilotinib compared to imatinib. A rapid decrease in BCR-ABL transcripts of ≤ 10 % BCR-ABL IS at 3 months is associated with a statistically significantly superior overall survival regardless which tyrosine kinase inhibitor was used (nilotinib, dasatinib, and imatinib). By using a second-generation tyrosine kinase inhibitor, however, the chance to achieve ≤ 10 % BCR-ABL IS at 3 months is significantly higher. Some data also indicate that some caution should be taken for new and so far unknown potential side effects of second-generation tyrosine kinase inhibitors.