Dr. Wierda on Minimal Residual Disease in CLL

William G. Wierda, MD, PhD, professor, Department of Leukemia, Division of Cancer Medicine, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses minimal residual disease in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL).

Wierda says that minimal residual disease-free status can be achieved with chemoimmunotherapy. Navitoclax, an oral small molecule inhibitor of BCL-2, is currently in development and has demonstrated good quality, deep remissions in clinical trials. Other small molecule inhibitors show excellent, long-term disease control. However, they do not show good, deep remission, but rather partial remissions, explains Wierda.

The chemoimmuntherapy data, investigated by Wierda and his colleagues, has demonstrated the potential for a good number of patients to achieve complete remission. For these types of patients, a significant proportion achieve minimal residual disease-free status in the bone marrow, when evaluated by four-color flow cytometry, says Wierda.