Is venetoclax combined with low-dose chemo and HMA safe and efficacious in older patients with AML?

During the 62nd American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition, the AML Hub spoke to Tapan Kadia, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, US. We asked, Is venetoclax combined with low-dose chemo and hypomethylating agent (HMA) safe and efficacious in older patients with AML?

Older and unfit patients with AML represent a difficult-to-treat population. In these patients, low-intensity therapy has been used for years because of the risk of toxicities and high rates of early mortality often observed with intensive chemotherapy. Unfortunately, although the low-intensity regimen is better tolerated, the response rates are modest. Recently, it has been shown that venetoclax, a BCL-2 inhibitor, in addition to HMAs improves response rates over HMAs alone. In this video, Kadia reports the promising results of a clinical trial evaluating the addition of venetoclax to the low-intensity backbone of cladribine plus low-dose cytarabine alternating with 5-azacytidine in older or unfit patients with newly diagnosed AML.