just 21 per cent of canadians diagnosed with aml live for another five years and patients frequently relapse despite achieving full remission through chemotherapy.
researchers, determined to improve these numbers, recruited 472 patients from medical centres around the world to probe whether oral azacitidine, also known by the trade name onureg, could be used as a maintenance therapy to extend remission. the team found that the group of patients that received 300 mg of azacitidine for two weeks each month showed statistical and clinical improvements in both relapse-free survival (rfs) and overall survival (os).
without the drug, patients experienced an rfs and os of 4.8 months and 14.8 months, respectively. the patients who took azacitidine, however, had an rfs of 10.2 months and an os of 24.7 months, considerable improvements. two years after the start of the trial, slightly more than 50 per cent of azacitidine patients were still alive, compared to 37.1 per cent of patients who did not receive the drug. side effects, which can include vomiting, infections and low white blood cell counts, were described by researchers as moderate and manageable.
the team believes the drug works by removing chemical markings called methyl groups from cellular dna. as these groups are responsible for regulating gene activity, their removal is suspected to restore the activity of tumour-suppressing genes in the vicinity, which are then able to combat the spread of cancerous cells.