VIDEO: Lack of cure biggest challenge in AML

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Biggest challenge is still not curing enough patients. So even though we have high response rates compared to solid tumors in acute myeloid leukemia, so 70% respond, if you look at the SEER database, which is, and the expected survival of all patients with acute myeloid leukemia, regardless of age, the five year survival rate is less than 30%.

So that means that our therapies are not providing lasting remissions but also maybe our response criteria is not good enough where we're over calling patients that are in remission, which is a confusing term for patients when we tell them they're in remission, and yet we continue treatment and we don't tell them they're cured.

So to get the cure, we need better therapies which are able to target cells that are hiding, and these would be the MRD, measurable residual disease cells, and we also need better tests that tell us which patients have not cleared all their leukemia cells. And if we can mix the two, so the novel therapies and the better tests, maybe we can intercept relapse in the future and improve the chances of survival from five years, ideally cure. We want all patients to be cured.