Clinical trial of AML therapy yields promising results

A clinical trial to assess the safety and effectiveness of an oral therapy to treat acute myeloid leukemia (AML) recently produced new data.

The medication, gilteritinib (ASP2215), is a product of pharmaceutical company Astellas US LLC, which is headquartered in Tokyo.

"We are pleased to see that gilteritinib demonstrates antileukemic activity even in patients whose mutations have previously been associated with poor outcomes," Jessica Altman, M.D., a trial investigator and an associate professor of hematology and oncology at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, said.

The new information was unveiled at the recent American Society of Hematology (ASH) annual meeting in Orlando, Fla.

AML is a blood and bone marrow cancer. Statistics from the American Cancer Society indicate more than 20,800 new cases of AML will have been diagnosed in 2015 by year's end and that more than half of those cases will result in death.

"We live in an era of personalized medicine and targeted therapies, yet there is still a significant need for more effective AML treatments, particularly for patients with well-characterized FLT3 molecular defects," Erkut Bahceci, M.D., executive medical director at Astellas, said.