New Drug In Early Clinical Testing Offers New Hope For Treatment Of CLL

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BlankNew Drug In Early Clinical Testing Offers New Hope For Treatment Of Chronic

Leukemia

19 Aug 2011

While testing a new drug designed to treat chronic leukemia, researchers at

Cleveland Clinic discovered new markers that could identify which patients would

receive maximum benefit from the treatment.

This information was released in the online edition of Blood, a weekly medical

journal published by the American Society of Hematology.

Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), a cancer of the white blood cells that is

incurable with standard treatment, is the most common type of leukemia in the

Western Hemisphere. Conventional chemotherapy is effective at controlling CLL

for many years, but the disease always relapses. CLL is characterized by an

uncontrolled cell growth and division due to a defect in a process called

programmed cell death, or apoptosis. A group of proteins called the Bcl-2 family

is responsible for this defect.

Almasan, Ph.D., a researcher in the Lerner Research Institute (LRI) of

Cleveland Clinic - in close collaboration with other researchers in both LRI and

the Taussig Cancer Institute of Cleveland Clinic - collected blood samples from

patients with CLL and tested the ability of a new drug to kill the cancerous

cells. The drug, Navitoclax, is already in early stage clinical testing for

patients with CLL. Navitoclax appears to be effective for some patients, and

until this research study, there had been no clear way to predict who will

respond to its effects.

In addition, these studies can be informative to the currently ongoing clinical

trials with Navitoclax in other hematologic malignancies or solid tumors.

" Follow-up studies on patients that have been treated with Navitoclax,

particularly those that are poor responders, could determine whether the Bcl-2

family genes examined in this study may also be important for development of

resistance to this agent, " said Almasan.

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Article URL: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/232967.php