Dan Pollyea, MD, on the Impact of Venetoclax in Patients With AML With IDH Mutations

In an interview with CancerNetwork®, Daniel A. Pollyea, MD of the University of Colorado Cancer Center discusses the results of a study comparing venetoclax (Venclexta) plus azacitidine (Vidaza) versus azacitidine alone for patients with acute myeloid leukemia with IDH mutations.

Transcription:

With this study, what we did was we took a large number of IDH patients who had been treated with venetoclax plus azacitidine, and we looked at their response rates, and their response rates were quite high. Time to response was very quick, usually just a month or 2, and the duration of response is quite good, and the overall survival was also very good. In this particular study, we didn't directly compare the IDH-positive to the IDH-negative venetoclax treated patients, but there's a very clear trend that these are better than the average responses to venetoclax when you just look at the IDH mutant patients. When you compare the venetoclax patient to the placebo treated patients, all of whom have an IDH mutation, it's very clear there's no such improvement in outcomes when patients do not get venetoclax and just receive azacitidine, which was the backbone therapy that both groups received. The response rate to azacitidine alone in those with an IDH mutation was not anything better than we would expect in an IDH patient versus what we've seen in the wild type patients. So this impact really seems to be a function of venetoclax plus the IDH patient. And so, I think we highlight the differences in In response, duration, and survival in these groups, and it's quite impressive.