Chronic phase treatment recommendations for first, second, and subsequent lines of treatment
First line | |
Imatinib or nilotinib or dasatinib | |
HLA type patients and siblings only in case of baseline warnings (high risk, major route CCA/Ph+) | |
Second line, intolerance to the first TKI | |
Anyone of the other TKIs approved first line (imatinib, nilotinib, dasatinib) | |
Second line, failure of imatinib first line | |
Dasatinib or nilotinib or bosutinib or ponatinib | |
HLA type patients and siblings | |
Second line, failure of nilotinib first line | |
Dasatinib or bosutinib or ponatinib | |
HLA type patients and siblings; search for an unrelated stem cell donor; consider alloSCT | |
Second line, failure of dasatinib first line | |
Nilotinib or bosutinib or ponatinib | |
HLA type patients and siblings; search for an unrelated stem cell donor; consider alloSCT | |
Third line, failure of and/or intolerance to 2 TKIs | |
Anyone of the remaining TKIs; alloSCT recommended in all eligible patients | |
Any line, T315I mutation | |
Ponatinib | |
HLA type patients and siblings; search for an unrelated stem cell donor; consider alloSCT |
First line | |
Imatinib or nilotinib or dasatinib | |
HLA type patients and siblings only in case of baseline warnings (high risk, major route CCA/Ph+) | |
Second line, intolerance to the first TKI | |
Anyone of the other TKIs approved first line (imatinib, nilotinib, dasatinib) | |
Second line, failure of imatinib first line | |
Dasatinib or nilotinib or bosutinib or ponatinib | |
HLA type patients and siblings | |
Second line, failure of nilotinib first line | |
Dasatinib or bosutinib or ponatinib | |
HLA type patients and siblings; search for an unrelated stem cell donor; consider alloSCT | |
Second line, failure of dasatinib first line | |
Nilotinib or bosutinib or ponatinib | |
HLA type patients and siblings; search for an unrelated stem cell donor; consider alloSCT | |
Third line, failure of and/or intolerance to 2 TKIs | |
Anyone of the remaining TKIs; alloSCT recommended in all eligible patients | |
Any line, T315I mutation | |
Ponatinib | |
HLA type patients and siblings; search for an unrelated stem cell donor; consider alloSCT |
In first line, the choice is among 3 TKIs that are currently approved and available, but are not always reimbursable, worldwide. The approved doses are 400 mg once daily for imatinib, 300 mg twice daily for nilotinib, and 100 mg once daily for dasatinib. Higher doses of all 3 drugs were tested, and a superiority of a higher dose was reported only in 1 study of imatinib.31 There are no recognized and solid criteria that can be recommended for making the choice. Provisional clinical criteria can be the characteristics of the disease (high risk, CCA/Ph+) on one hand, and the relationship between the patient (comorbidities) and the safety profile of the drugs on the other hand. In second line, a change of drug is preferred to an increase of imatinib dose.5,42-50 To make the switch from one TKI to another, there are things that must always be taken into account: the presence and type of a mutation (see Table 4), the side effects and the toxicity of the previous TKI, and different comorbidities that can be of concern with different TKIs. The definition of intolerance may sometimes be objective and based on evidence, but sometimes is subjective and open to criticism. Experience and common sense suggest that a patient who is intolerant to 1 TKI can easily respond to other TKIs, whereas a patient in whom 1 TKI has failed, and who is intolerant to another TKI, is at considerable risk of subsequent treatment failure. Recommendations for alloSCT are based on the results from HLA-identical siblings or HLA-matched unrelated donors, myeloablative and RIC,T-cell replete or T-cell depleted. They do not include cord blood or haplotype-matched donors, or experimental conditioning regimens. The EBMT risk score125 is still of value, although insufficient numbers of patients have been transplanted in recent years and after TKI therapy to allow a robust reanalysis.