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Continued from Page 19 “The average life span of these patients was longer than many would have expected and the study results help emphasize that children receiving palliative care services are living — and that palliative care is principally about how to best live — with grave life-threatening conditions,” said lead author Chris Feudtner, MD, PhD, MPH, director of research for the Pediatric Advanced Care Team at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “The longevity of patient survival underscores the importance, for many patients and families, of integrating the best of palliative care with the typical medical and surgical interventions that seek to ameliorate the underlying disease.” Lenalidomide Viable Treatment Option for Acute Myeloid Leukemia According to a recent study pub- lished in the journal Blood, a drug currently approved and used for treating myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) has modest activity in older acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients. Lenalidomide is a targeted agent used to treat lower risk MDS patients with a deletion on the fifth chromosome [del(5q)]. Researchers hypothesized that the drug would also work in the subset of older AML patients with the same genetic abnormality. Older AML patients with a chromosome 5q deletion have a response rate of less than 25 percent with conventional chemotherapy. A nationwide, multi-institutional research team, led by Mikkael Sekeres, MD, director of the Leukemia Program at Cleveland Clinic’s Taussig Cancer Institute, tested the safety and effectiveness of using lenalidomide in 37 previously untreated older AML patients who declined standard chemotherapy. Patients were treated with 50 milligrams of lenalidomide daily for 28 days followed by 10 milligrams daily for 21 days until their disease progressed or they experienced toxicity. Five patients (14%) had a partial or complete response to the drug, and relapse-free survival was an average of five months. MDNEWS.COM  JULY-AUGUST 2011  MD NEWS Cleveland-Akron-Canton | 27 “Even though MDS and AML are quite different in disease severity, certain MDS and AML cases involve the same genetic abnormality, and therefore, they may respond similarly to medication that targets that abnormality,” said Dr. Sekeres. Researchers also point out that lenalido- mide, which is taken orally, achieved more than half of the response rate that is typically seen with the current regimen for AML of IV chemotherapy, which can only be delivered to hospitalized patients. As a result of this study, research is now underway to look at the effectiveness of a combination therapy, involving IV chemotherapy with a targeted oral agent, for AML patients. Cleveland Clinic is collaborating with H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Fla., on this study, and both sites are actively enrolling patients. The study was supported in part by funding from the National Cancer Institute, as part of the U.S. cancer cooperative groups consortium. n

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