Chemo-free regimen works in one leukemia

A regimen that does not use standard chemotherapy to treat acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) in patients who are not high-risk led to 2-year event-free, disease-free, and overall survival approaching 100%, outperforming a conventional cytotoxic regimen, results of a randomized trial showed, as presented at the American Society for Hematology meeting. Patients treated with the combination of arsenic trioxide (ATO) and all-trans-retinoic acid (ATRA) had an event-free survival of 97% compared with 86.7% for patients who received ATRA plus idarubicin followed by anthracycline-based maintenance and consolidation therapy. Read more here.