Dr. Erba on BCR-ABL Ratio After Imatinib in CML

Harry Erba, MD, PhD, professor of medicine, director, Hematologic Malignancy Program, University of Alabama at Birmingham, discusses the frequency in which patients with chronic-phase chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) fail to achieve a BCR-ABL transcript level below 10% after 3 months of treatment with imatinib.

Data from several clinical trials sponsored by different pharmaceutical companies over the past decade has been largely consistent. In the control arm (imatinib) of the ENESTnd trial, 33% of patients failed to achieve a BCR-ABL ratio below 10% after 3 months of treatment. In the DASISION trial, about 25% of patients failed to achieve this milestone.