Focus on Leukemia
“Iclusig is the third drug approved to treat CML and the second drug approved to treat ALL this year, demonstrating FDA’s commitment to approving safe and effective drugs for patients with rare diseases.”
FDA Approves Iclusig to Treat Two Rare Types of Leukemia
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved Iclusig (ponatinib) to treat adults with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) and Philadelphia chromosome positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia (Ph+ ALL), two rare blood and bone marrow diseases. Iclusig is being approved more than three months ahead of the product’s prescription user fee goal date.
Measuring Your CML Treatment Response
Your doctor needs to monitor your response to drug therapy for chronic myeloid leukemia with blood and bone marrow tests. This is a critically important step to undertake to bring your CML under control. Your test results help your doctor decide whether to increase your drug dose to try for a better response, decrease or stop the drug briefly because of side effects, change to a different drug or drug combination to better control the CML, or change to a different drug or drug combination to manage side effects.
What Happens Once CML Treatment Begins?
To assess your response to treatment for chronic myelogenous leukemia, you will need to undergo blood and marrow tests before and during treatment. These tests include complete blood count (CBC), cytogenetic analysis, and quantitative polymerase chain reaction (QPCR). How often you will need these tests depends on the time since your treatment started and your previous test results. There are three different types of response to medications.
