Gene mutation improves leukemia dru...(ngs of this study may enable doctors to ...),Health

The research analyzed the outcome of 185 AML patients age 60 or less who had achieved complete remission following initial therapy. Thirty-four of the patients (18 percent) had mutations in the RAS gene, and of these, 22 received high-dose cytarabine and 12 received the drug at low dose.

The high-dose patients with RAS mutations had the lowest relapse rate 45 percent experienced disease recurrence after an average 10-year follow-up compared with 68 percent for those with normal RAS genes.

"That means fifty-five percent of patients with RAS mutations were cured compared with 32 percent of high-dose patients with normal RAS," Bloomfield says.

Of patients who received low doses of the drug, all those with the mutations relapsed, as did 80 percent of those with normal RAS genes.

"These data strongly suggest that mutations in RAS influence the response of AML patients to high-dose cytarabine, and they support the use of these mutations as biomarkers for this therapy," says Bloomfield, who is also a Distinguished University Professor, the William G. Pace III Professor in Cancer Research and an OSU Cancer Scholar.

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