A trial of elacytarabine for acute myeloid leukaemia that has come back or did not respond to treatment

Cancer type:

Acute leukaemia

Acute myeloid leukaemia (AML)

Blood cancers

Leukaemia

Status:

Results

Phase:

Phase 3

This trial looked at a drug called elacytarabine (pronounced el-ah-site-ar-ah-been) for people with acute myeloid leukaemia (AML). It was for people with AML that had come back or did not respond to treatment.

Doctors usually treat AML with chemotherapy. The aim of chemotherapy is to get rid of the leukaemia. This is called remission induction Open a glossary item . But for some people it doesn’t work, or the leukaemia comes back later on. If this happens it is more difficult to treat. So doctors are looking for new ways to help people in this situation. In this trial they looked at a drug called elacytarabine.

Elacytarabine is a made up of a drug called cytarabine and a fatty acid. Cytarabine is already used to treat AML, but it is often difficult to get enough of the drug into the leukaemia cells. Researchers wanted to see if having the drug attached to a fatty acid helps to get more of the drug into the cells.

The aims of the trial were to find out

If elacytarabine is better than other treatments for people with AML that has not responded to induction treatment or has come back afterwards
More about the side effects

Summary of results

The researchers found that elacytarabine was not a useful treatment for people with AML that had come back or did not respond to treatment.

381 people took part and

Half had elacytarabine
Half had 1 of 7 usual AML treatments recommended by their doctor (Doctors call this the (control group)

The researchers looked at

How well the treatment worked
The length of time before the cancer came back
The length of time people lived after joining the trial

They found there was no difference between the people who had elacytarabine and the control group in any of these.

People in the elacytarabine group had more side effects such as liver problems, headaches and high levels of cholesterol and potassium in the blood.

The researchers concluded that elacytarabine was no better than any of the 7 usual AML treatments that people had in this trial.

We have based this summary on information from the team who ran the trial. The information they sent us has been reviewed by independent specialists (peer reviewed Open a glossary item ) and published in a medical journal. The figures we quote above were provided by the trial team. We have not analysed the data ourselves.