Intro. | Anatomy | Abstracting, Coding, & Staging | Treatment | Exercise || Go to Lymphoma ||
Chemo and Other Therapies
Surgery and Radiation | Chemo. & Other Therapies | Supportive Care | Other Blood Diseases | Unit Review |

Drugs Commonly Used for Treating the Leukemias

Chemotherapy for Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Daunorubicin and cytarabine
Daunorubicin, cytarabine and thioguanine
Cytarabine and idarubicin
Cytarabine and mitoxantrone
Cytarabine or methotrexate intrathecally for known
    CNS infiltration

Other drugs

Etoposide
Amsacrine
Mitoxantrone
Idarubicin (new)
Homoharringtonine

Chemotherapy for Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia

High-dose methotrexate or intrathecal methotrexate for CNS     prophylaxis
The average length of treatment is between one and one-half and     three years for ALL

Vincristine, prednisone, doxorubicin or daunorubicin
Vincristine, prednisone, asparaginase, daunorubicin
Vincristine, prednisone, asparaginase, doxorubicin
Vincristine, prednisone, doxorubicin, intrathecal methotrexate
Methotrexate, vincristine, asapraginase, dexamethasone
Vincristine, prednisone, anthracycline, with or without
    asparaginase

Maintenance chemotherapy with combinations of the following:

6 mercaptopurine
Cyclophosphamide
Cyatarabine
Prednisone
Vincristine
Carmustine
Daunorubicin
Doxorubicin
Teniposide

Chemotherapy for Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia

Chlorambucil (oral) with or without prednisone
Cytoxan (oral) with or without prednisone
Fludarabine (under clinical evaluation for refractory CLL)

Combinations
COP (cytoxan, vincristine, prednisone)

Key words

Induction--administering chemotherapy to obtain remission
Nadir--the lowest number of stem cells in the bone marrow; the    point in chemotherapy administration when the patient is at    greatest risk of developing infection; also called
   myelosuppression
Remission--the clinical disappearance of leukemia, characterized
    by a normal peripheral blood count, less than 5% blasts in
    the bone marrow, no clinical signs or symptoms of leukemia,
    and no evidence of CNS or visceral infiltration by leukemia
Consolidation--administering high doses of chemotherapy for a
    short term to maintain remission
Maintenance--administering relatively low doses of chemotherapy
    for a long term to maintain remission

Hormones

Prednisone in combination with alkylating agents

Biological Response Modifiers (under clinical evaluation)

Bone Marrow Transplantation (autogenous = from the patient;    allogenic = from another patient); also called ABMT
Interleukin-2 (under clinical evaluation)
Colony stimulating factors (CSF) (under clinical evaluation)