We’ve just concluded one of the most historic years on record in terms of new therapy approvals for blood cancers. In all, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved 18 therapies to treat patients with blood cancers, including some entirely new agents and some new uses for already approved drugs.
Among these approvals were the first new therapies – four to be precise – for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) after a 40-year drought in treatment advances for this deadly blood cancer. And two revolutionary CAR (chimeric antigen receptor) T-cell immunotherapies, which reprogram the body’s own T cells to find and kill cancer cells were approved for patients with leukemia and lymphoma. I’m proud to say that The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) played a role in all but three of these advancements.