How long does someone live with AML? So the duration of life expectancy for a patient with AML at first is unknowable for the specific patient. Of course we have population data, but that only goes so far in understanding the individual patient because we talked a lot already about the disease factors, but that has to be complemented by the specific patient. How healthy is the patient? What are the patient's goals? What risks and potential benefits is the patient willing to accept with these therapeutic options when we think about treating their leukemia? So for every patient the potential outcome can be very different. There are some patients who have, despite all of our best intentions, a lower chance of surviving six months to a year, and many other patients who we anticipate a great chance of cure in many, many years of good quality life. Of course the life expectancy varies tremendously based upon these genetic subgroups. For instance, if a younger person comes in and has one of these better risk chromosome abnormalities like an 821 translocation or inversion 16, we know that they have got about a 60 to 65% chance of being cured with standard chemotherapy. For older individuals who can't necessarily tolerate aggressive chemotherapy or stem cell transplantation, the prognosis is worse. Now this is actually a great story because not so long ago we would tell this person, you know, without treatment your life expectancy is about three to six months. And there was a lot of research done in looking at lower intensity types of treatments for older individuals in particular or even those patients who had medical problems and couldn't tolerate aggressive chemotherapy. And so as a class of medicines there are license for a related disease called myelodysplastic syndrome, the so-called hypomethylating agents. And with this we were able to extend people's survival to around eight months to a year. And most recently there's been a medication licensed called Venetoclax that we add to this that now has extended people's survival even further. So we're talking more of survival in the 15 to 18 months range. We need to do better, obviously, and in fact we're now building on this as a foundation to add additional drugs that don't necessarily have overlapping side effects, but hopefully we can improve upon this. So we can cure some people with AML, others we can certainly extend their life, but the individual prognosis really varies greatly based on age and based on these chromosomal and genetic abnormalities that we've talked about.
HealthTree • March 13, 2023
