New Drugs in Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Standard treatment of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) results in a median survival of approximately 1 year. Together with increasing understanding of the biology of AML, this has led to the introduction of many new anti-AML drugs. Here we discuss the most prominent of these: clofarabine, epigenetic-acting agents, gemtuzumab ozogamycin, and FLT3 inhibitors. All are indubitably active. However, their therapeutic efficacy relative to each other and to standard therapy is unclear. The future is likely to see combinations of the drugs with each other and with more standard therapies. There also will be a shift away from inquiring which therapy is best for the average patient to inquiring which therapy is best for a given patient with a specific constellation of disease markers.