Leukemia is a form of blood cancer of the plasma cells where the production of blood cells becomes hampered. In this particular disorder, undeveloped blood cells (blasts) flow into the blood and soon them overcrowd the healthy ones. Soon, there is an extreme lacking of blood cells. If not treated properly, this disease can lead to fatal conclusions.
Therefore, we should consider ourselves fortunate that there have been several developments when it comes to the matter of dealing with this disorder. The new treatment research is trying its best in order to not only cure the disease but also put it in a complete state of remission.
Types of treatment and their new developments
1. Chemotherapy: you can call this therapy the “go to” therapy when it comes to dealing with any form of cancer. In this form of treatment, drugs are administered to the body that attacks the cancer cells and stops their growth to some extent. However, there are many side effects associated with this therapy. Some of those side effects tend to cause a new form of cancer. To that end, new drugs are introduced to not only increase its effectiveness but also decrease the impact of the side effect.
Sapacitabine: This form of the drug is a promise of AML treatment in older people.
Laromustime: This drug is also being tested for treating older AML patients.
Tipifarnib: This drug is fairly new on the block and is showing a lot of promise in the early studies. Therefore, it is soon going to be included in large-scale trials.
Bortezomib: this drug has been in use for chemotherapy for a very long time. Helpful in treating multiple myeloma and lymphoma, scientists are now researching a way to use it for Acute Myeloblast Leukemia as well.
2. Stem cell transplants: stem cell transplant or bone marrow transplantation has been growing when it comes to treatment for any form of blood disorder. However, considering that the entire immune system has to be almost shut down, the side effects can even be fatal. To that end, scientists are now postulating ways to increase its effectiveness and reduce its complication. Furthermore, researches are being done to differentiate Autologous, and allogeneic transplants on the basis of their effectiveness. Furthermore, mini-transplants are also looked into.
3. Targeted therapy: Targeted therapy has been able to help so many people because it targets only the cancer cells. However, older technologies are not very precise. To that end, the thought has been put into targeted therapy in order to detect the changes in acute myeloid leukemia and react accordingly. The examples of new drugs being used in targeted therapy as follows:
Polo-like Kinase inhibitors like volasertib.
Histone deacetylase inhibitors like vorinostat and panobinostat like panobinostat and vorinostat.
Aurora Kinase inhibitors such as AZD1152.
4. Immunotherapy: In immunotherapy, drugs are administered to the body with the sole goal of making the body itself fight and destroy the cancer cells. Following are the types of drugs that are administered to the body for this therapy:
Monoclonal Antibodies: Man-made immune system antibodies and designed to target specific targets like substances on the cancer cell’s surface or improving upon the immune system of the body. They are of many kinds and currently, the usage of Gemtuzumab Ozogamicin has been approved. This drug modifies the antibody with a cell poison attached.
Immune checkpoint inhibitors: for the immune system to not attack the normal cells of the body, there are these cells called the checkpoints that shut down the immune response for certain organs when there is no need. However, some cancer cells are able to manipulate these checkpoints to their advantage and fly under the radar. The immune checkpoint inhibitors target these manipulated checkpoints.
Car T-cell therapy: This particular form of therapy is to push the immune system to fight leukemia. In this particular therapy, immune cells called the T cells are removed from the body of the patient. These cells are then modified in labs by adding CARs or chimerical antigen receptors. These new cells are then re-implanted into the patient and the attack the cancer cells of their own accord.
All these techniques have displayed immense promise and they even promise to improve even further. How effective these new techniques are going to be in the future, only time will tell. However, as of this moment, these new developments have given hope to many patients that the day when leukemia is completely eliminated might be here soon.