UF-Developed Genetic Score Improves Outcomes by Personalizing Leukemia Therapy
Using patients’ own genetics to tailor their chemotherapy regimens appears to improve outcomes in children with acute myeloid leukemia, a pediatric cancer for which treatment has gone unchanged for 50 years, a new University of Florida Health-led study shows.
Personalizing chemotherapy treatment using a predictive score can improve long-term survival in acute myeloid leukemia patients by as much as 9 percent compared with a non-personalized approach when applied to the overall population. It can improve outcomes by about 30 percent in individual patients matched to a more intense chemotherapy regimen, according to the study, published July 30 in Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
“Given the genetic basis of the score, it could be used by clinicians preemptively to match patients with the most effective treatment regimen to lead to remission,” said Jatinder Lamba, Ph.D., associate dean for research and graduate education and a professor in the UF College of Pharmacy who led the multi-institution study and serves as co-leader of the UF Health Cancer Center’s Cancer Targeting and Therapeutics research program.
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