Informed Decisions in Acute Myeloid Leukemia: Beyond Morphology and Cytogenetics

In the past decade, extraordinary progress has been made in the understanding of cancer biology and mechanisms of leukemogenesis, and we are now uniquely poised to see research-based innovations translate directly into the care of patients with AML. This session will focus on the clinical management of AML in this new “era of genomic medicine, summarizing available evidence and highlighting optimal strategies for diagnosis, treatment, and management.

Dr. Courtney DiNardo will summarize the genomic landscape of AML and review recent clinical advances including novel molecularly-targeted therapies currently under development for the treatment of AML. She will review the importance of a comprehensive genomic assessment for the classification and prognosis of patients at AML diagnosis and she will examine whether the awareness of functional AML subsets can be used to inform rational treatment strategies.

Dr. Arati Rao will review the clinical challenges of AML in the elderly population. She will focus on methods to assess patient fitness and highlight available evidence to guide the treatment of older patients with AML. Dr. Rao will stress the importance of an individualized treatment approach outside of simple chronologic age, along with the importance of clinical trials in this demographic accounting for both the heterogeneity of tumor biology and patient characteristics.

Dr. Gert Ossenkoppele will discuss the importance, methods, and implications of minimal residual disease (MRD)assessments in AML. As the availability of newer and evermore sensitive technology to measure the presence of leukemia cells evolves, Dr. Ossenkoppele will provide recommendations on how to define MRD, how to assess for MRD, and whether MRD measurements should be used to drive treatment decisions.