Treatment-free remission after first-line dasatinib treatment in patients with chronic myeloid leukemia in the chronic phase: the D-NewS Study of the Kanto CML Study Group

Treatment outcomes for chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) have dramatically improved with the development of tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKI). However, due to the improved prognosis for CML, problems have arisen from long-term administration of TKI. The present study sought to verify whether more patients could achieve treatment-free remission (TFR) after stopping the administration of dasatinib using dasatinib as frontline treatment. Treatment-naïve chronic phase CML cases were treated with dasatinib as frontline treatment. Dasatinib treatment was stopped for 26 patients who achieved deep molecular response (DMR) within 24 months and were able to maintain DMR for an additional 2 years. Ten patients (38.5%) achieved DMR maintenance after 12 months. Recurrence was confirmed in 16 patients, and the median recurrence-free survival time was 5.1 months. The cumulative DMR rates at six and 12 months after restarting treatment were 84.6% and 100%, respectively. The results of this study demonstrated that the DMR maintenance rate after 12 months was 38.5%, which was not significantly different from previous TKI stop trials. The 2-year dasatinib administration period after reaching DMR did not contribute to improve TFR rates. These results suggest that the type of TKI is not associated with better TFR rates.