Marin D, Milojkovic D, Olivarria E et al.
Imperial College London, London, UK.
Blood 2008;112:4437–44.
Editor’s note: In 1998, imatinib mesylate began to be used for the management of patients with chronic-phase chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) and resulted in an improvement in response rates. Imatinib is now recommended for the initial treatment of all adult CML patients. Although the majority of patients respond well to imatinib as single-agent therapy, a proportion of patients respond poorly. As other treatment options, such as allogeneic stem cell transplantation and second-generation tyrosine kinase inhibitors, exist for these patients, early identification of these individuals is crucial. In 2006, the European LeukemiaNet published a series of empirical recommendations designed to identify patients likely to respond poorly to imatinib (
Blood 2006;108:1809–20). The recommendations were based on assessing response to treatment at various time points using specific hematological, cytogenetic, and molecular criteria, and classifying the responses of patients who meet these criteria as “suboptimal” or “failure”. The present investigators analyzed the outcomes of 224 patients with chronic-phase CML treated at a single institution to validate these recommendations.