A lighthouse to guide the way to a better life
Patients with chronic myelogenous leukemia may be able to go off medicine for good as doctors are moving treatment-free remission into mainstream clinical practice.
The China Anti-Cancer Association started the “Lighthouse Project” with Swiss healthcare firm Novartis on Friday. The project aims to promote treatment-free remission, or TFR, among patients.
Duan Minghui, a doctor from the Peking Union Medical College Hospital specializing at blood disease, said as CML has been proved controllable, many patients are now looking for a better quality life.
But before 2001 when Imatinib, a tyrosine kinase inhibitor used to treat CML and some other blood cancers, was approved and released on market, the diagnose of CML was basically a death sentence.
“More than 90 percent of CML patients would live only three to five years,” said Duan. “But with targeted drugs like Imatinib, now 90 percent of patients can live a normal life.”
Duan said patients who have taken medication regularly for more than 3-5 years can now try to stop.
“The patient will have to take one more year of medicine after he or she decided to go on TFR,” said Duan. “After the medication stopped, the patient must do body check regularly to monitor the status of the CML.”
But Duan also said patients must work very hard to earn the chance of TFR.
“Taking the medicine on time with right dosage is the key to recovery,” said Duan. “It’s easy to say but a lot of patients can’t manage to do that.”
Zhang Yanli, a doctor from Henan Cancer Hospital, said six of her patients have successfully stopped the medication for more than a year.
Jingjing is one of them. The 27-year-old came to discuss the possibility with Zhang in 2017 after taking three and a half years of medication because she was pregnant.
“Many CML patients don’t have children,” said Jingjing. “For they fear the medicine may lead the fetus to malformation.”
Now Jingjing’s child is almost one year old, both the mother and the child are fine. She goes to the hospital every three months to check the CML-related index. Zhang said in the future Jingjing would need only check twice a year.
“Many people still have concerns about TFR,” said Jingjing. “But I’m an example to show the others we can live a good life.”
According to Yan Zhao, the head pharmacist of Tianjin Medical University Cancer Institute and Hospital who is also a member of CACA, the project will be carried out in more than 50 hospitals nationwide, covering more than 1,000 CML patients.
“With the project, we hope to collect more real-world study data from the patients,” said Yan. “Including their treatment and recovery after they left the hospital.”
Yan said CML in China is quite different compared with the situation abroad.
“For example, patients in China mostly aged between 45 and 50 while in Western countries they aged between 67 to 70,” Yan told Shanghai Daily. “With the TFR data we get from the project, we will have more chance to build treatment models that are more suitable for our country.”