A trial looking at clofarabine for children and teenagers with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (BIOV 111)

This trial looked at clofarabine for children and teenagers with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) that had not responded to treatment, or had come back after treatment.

This trial was for children and young people up to and including the age of 21. We use the term ‘you’ in this summary, but of course if you are a parent, we are referring to your child.

Doctors often treat ALL with chemotherapy and possibly a bone marrow or stem cell transplant. This often works very well, and these days about 8 out of 10 children with ALL (80%) are cured.

But unfortunately either the treatment doesn’t work (the ALL is ‘refractory’), or the leukaemia comes back again (relapses) in the other 2 out of 10 children (20%). If this happens, ALL can be very difficult to treat. The drugs that are currently available for this situation often don’t work very well.

Clofarabine is a chemotherapy drug. It is similar to other drugs called fludarabine and cladribine, which are used to treat different types of leukaemia. Doctors hoped that clofarabine would be useful for treating children with ALL that was refractory or had relapsed.

The aim of this trial was to find out how well clofarabine worked for children with relapsed or refractory ALL.