Saad Usmani, MD, chief of the myeloma service and Eytan Stein, MD, chief of the leukemia service, both from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discuss menin inhibitors and the future of leukemia research in this podcast episode of SOHO Insider.
Dr. Stein discusses the development of the first menin inhibitor approved the US Food and Drug Administration for relapsed or refractory acute leukemia with a KMTA translocation.
“The response rate is in the range of 60 to 70%,” noted Dr. Stein, including 30% complete remission or partial hematologic recovery.
“I think the big issue with menin inhibitors is that they’re not durable,” Dr. Stein said. “Patients go into remission… for something like six to nine months, but then they eventually relapse.”
About combination therapies, Dr. Stein said the goal was to follow the myeloma treatment paradigm.
“I think that what you all have done in myeloma is what we’re looking to do in leukemia,”he said, adding that the combination therapies will “hopefully lead to more durable remissions and allow more people to have successful … transplants, which seems to be still the best anti-leukemia therapy in 2025.”
Ten years from now, Dr. Stein said he would like to see more intensive therapy upfront.
“10 years from now, what I’m hoping is that transplant is reserved for patients with the highest-risk disease,” he said. “[And] that we’re able to give intensive therapy upfront and then move to a maintenance strategy, where you’re giving targeted agents as your maintenance approach with those targeted agents having many fewer side effects.”
