Treatment-free remission in patients with chronic myeloid leukemia

Abstract

Chronic myeloid leukemia is a disease that affects about 1.9 in every 100 000 people annually and represents 15% of all new cases of leukemia in the West. Survival rates in CML have dramatically increased since the advent of TKIs. The idea of treatment-free remission has drawn extensive research due to the discovery that full reduction can be attained in some CML patients. Withdrawal of TKI treatment on certain patients with deep molecular response has yielded full remission, hence the concept 'treatment-free remission'.