When treating Acute Myeloid Leukemia, its important to recognize the distinction between remission and cure. When their Acute Myeloid Leukemia is in remission and everything looks good, a lot of patients say, Thanks. Im done, right? saysDr. Richard Stone, director of the Adult Acute Leukemia Program at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

Instead, when a patient enters remission, it signals that theyre ready for the final phase of treatment. Post-treatment therapy offers the chance of a cure. It also reduces the risk of a recurrence, which can be caused by residual leukemia cells that may have remained in the blood after treatment.

Oh no. Sorry, Dr. Ston tells patients who assume remission means their treatment is over. We need to give you some more therapy to kill off those residual, undetectable leukemia cells, so we can go from remission to cure, he explains.

And thats really what were talking about in AML therapy today. We want to get you into remission and we have a great chance of doing that in most patients. And we want to cure you with post-remission therapy.

And autologous stem cell transplant involves taking the patients own stem cells, giving them high doses of chemotherapy, and then giving those cells back. We dont do that very much, says Dr. Stone.

The other big choice isallogeneic stem cell transplant, often called bone marrow transplant.And thats where we give you, the patient, chemotherapy to put your immune system to sleep, says Dr. Stone, adding that sometimes radiation is included in the pre-transplant treatment plan for the same purpose.And then we give you cells from another individual.

We give you those (donor) cells to replenish your bone-marrow compartment, where we expect those donated cells tokill off the residual undetected leukemic cells. The result is called Graft vs. Leukemia effect, which means the donor cells have killed off any residual leukemia cells. Thats why stem-cell transplantation is a very effectiveanti-leukemic therapy, Dr. Stone explains.

Why dont we do it in everybody? he asks. Because its pretty dangerous and we dont do unless we really think thats the only way we have to cure you.

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Dr. Richard Stone is Director of the Adult Acute Leukemia Program at DFCI. Read More

When treating Acute Myeloid Leukemia, its important to recognize the distinction between remission and cure. When their Acute Myeloid Leukemia is in remission and everything looks good, a lot of patients say, Thanks. Im done, right? saysDr. Richard Stone, director of the Adult Acute Leukemia Program at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

Instead, when a patient enters remission, it signals that theyre ready for the final phase of treatment. Post-treatment therapy offers the chance of a cure. It also reduces the risk of a recurrence, which can be caused by residual leukemia cells that may have remained in the blood after treatment.

And thats really what were talking about in AML therapy today. We want to get you into remission and we have a great chance of doing that in most patients. And we want to cure you with post-remission therapy.

And autologous stem cell transplant involves taking the patients own stem cells, giving them high doses of chemotherapy, and then giving those cells back. We dont do that very much, says Dr. Stone.

The other big choice isallogeneic stem cell transplant, often called bone marrow transplant.And thats where we give you, the patient, chemotherapy to put your immune system to sleep, says Dr. Stone, adding that sometimes radiation is included in the pre-transplant treatment plan for the same purpose.And then we give you cells from another individual.

We give you those (donor) cells to replenish your bone-marrow compartment, where we expect those donated cells tokill off the residual undetected leukemic cells. The result is called Graft vs. Leukemia effect, which means the donor cells have killed off any residual leukemia cells. Thats why stem-cell transplantation is a very effectiveanti-leukemic therapy, Dr. Stone explains.

Why dont we do it in everybody? he asks. Because its pretty dangerous and we dont do unless we really think thats the only way we have to cure you.

Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.

Dr. Richard Stone is Director of the Adult Acute Leukemia Program at DFCI. Read More

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Post-Remission Therapy For AML: Allogeneic Stem-Cell Transplant - SurvivorNet