Current treatment of Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) generally consists of chemotherapy followed by a Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant (HSCT) to attempt to clean out the bone marrow of remaining cancer cells.
This clinical approach has not significantly changed in decades, however outcomes remain poor with around 40% of transplanted patients experiencing cancer relapse, and these patients having two-year survival rates of less than 20%. One reason is that newly transplanted patients are unable to receive targeted cancer therapies since such therapies would be toxic to the fragile HSCT. A more effective approach to HSCTs is long overdue.