In this interview with HealthTree, Dr. Stein shares with us research being presented at the ASH 2022 meeting that he thinks patients should be excited about. One impressive area of research is a class of drugs called menin inhibitors. Research is showing that patients with KMT2A rearranged and NPM1 mutant acute myeloid leukemia are showing response rates between 40-50%, meaning these drugs may be an option to help these patients get back into remission. Dr. Stein also shares his excitement surrounding the drug, magrolimab, an antibody therapy that is producing high rates of complete remission.

Watch the video or read below to access Dr. Stein’s full interview:

“Hi there, I’m Eytan Stein chief of the Leukemia Service at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. I just wanted to express to everyone how excited I am about this year's ASH annual meeting and exposition where we have all sorts of new compounds and new therapies that we think are going to improve the lives of patients with acute myeloid leukemia.

I want to highlight a few that I've seen that I think are truly exciting, two of them are classes of drugs called Menin Inhibitors. One is called Revumenib, the other one is called Ziftomenib. There has been some data presented by Dr. Ghayas Issa  and by Dr Harry Erba really demonstrating that the use of these drugs for patients with KMT2A rearranged and NPM1 mutant acute myeloid leukemia is quite effective with overall response rates of 40-50%. What that means, just to break it down for everyone, is that if you have acute myeloid leukemia with one of these specific gene rearrangements or gene mutations, there now is a therapy available to you on clinical trial that really might put your disease back into remission. That’s something that I think is extraordinarily exciting and I would encourage you to talk to your doctor about what are the genetics of your disease, and are there any targeted therapies that might be considered. 

The other thing I'm excited about, in this very brief period of time that I have to talk to you about this, is a medication called Magrolimab that's an antibody therapy that’s being given in combination with Azacitidine and Venetoclax. My friend and colleague, Dr Naval Daver, from the MD Anderson Cancer Center presented some exciting data showing that when you combine Magrolimab with Azacitidine and Venetoclax you get quite high rates of complete remissions, especially in those patients who have a specific genetic abnormality called a P53 mutation.

So a lot of science going on, a lot of advances for patients. It’s been a great meeting, and we hope that once the meeting is over, over the course of the next year, that we are going to make even more exciting advancements that you’ll hear about in 2023. Thank you so much.”