Contact: Louise DuPont

Patients eligible for this study include elderly people, age 60 and older, who are newly diagnosed with AML or relapsed patients who have not been treated. The eligibility requirements attempt to safeguard patients from undue harm.

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Jan. 24, 2005) -- The University of Kentucky’s Markey Cancer Center is conducting a clinical trial for elderly and relapsed Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) patients.

AML is a blood cancer mostly affecting older patients. New therapies aimed at improving survival in elderly and relapsed patients are a high priority. Dr. Dianna Howard, a physican-researcher in the UK College of Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Hematology and Oncology, is leading the effort to create a new way to help elderly and relapsing patients beat AML.

Howard and her team found that the combination of a new drug, bortezomib (Velcade), with a standard chemotherapy drug, idarubicin, rapidly kills AML cells. The drug combination also offers a greater potential for remission with fewer side effects.

Bortezomib interrupts the biological signals that keep AML cells alive and makes them more likely to die when treated with idarubicin. With the same drug combination, stem cells -- the cells responsible for producing normal blood cells -- are not killed.

“This study is unique, not only in the combination of drugs that are being prescribed, but also because it is the only study of AML looking to see what effect this treatment has on the leukemia stem cell—the cancer stem cell,”Howard said.

Patients eligible for this study include elderly people, age 60 and older, who are newly diagnosed with AML or relapsed patients who have not been treated. The eligibility requirements attempt to safeguard patients from undue harm.

For more information on this study, or to see if you are eligible, please call Howard’s team at the UK Markey Cancer Center, at (866) 340-4488 or (859) 257-4488.