Clinical trials are an important part of our research efforts. They represent the first step in evaluating new treatments that may eventually be approved by the FDA. Roswell Park has a strong clinical trials program, with an average of 15-25 leukemia trials open at any given time. They may involve:
- The development of new drugs for leukemia, especially targeted therapies and immunotherapy (antibodies and CAR T-cell therapies).
- Finding new ways to use existing cancer drugs or other therapies.
- Understanding how leukemia cells multiply and discovering ways to stop them.
- The discovery of new targets or pathways we can use to attack the disease.
Some of our current studies include:
- Novel anti-leukemia therapies, such as inhibitors of FLT3 and IDH1/2 mutations in certain AML cells
- Genetically modified immune (T) cells
- New antibody formulations
- Oral chemotherapy substitutes for IV chemotherapy
Get tomorrow's new drug today
If you’re diagnosed with leukemia, you can’t wait six to 12 months for the FDA to approve a drug. You need it now. Our goal is to provide our patients with cutting-edge, groundbreaking therapies even before those treatments are widely available. For example, in a recent two-year period, the FDA approved nine new leukemia therapies. Roswell Park patients already had access to seven of those drugs long before.
Half or more of all Roswell Park patients are eligible to enroll in a clinical trial of a promising new treatment. All of today’s standard treatments had to be tested in clinical trials before they received FDA approval.
Through clinical trials, leukemia patients at Roswell Park were among the first to benefit from imatinib mesylate (Gleevec®), FDA-approved in 2001 for the treatment of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML).
In a recent 2-year period, the FDA approved nine new drugs for different categories of patients with acute leukemia. Roswell Park patients who enrolled in clinical trials had access to seven of these drugs prior to FDA approval, including:
- Ivosidenib (Tibsovo®)
- Venetoclax (Venclexta®)
- Glasdegib (Daurismo™)
- Gilteritinib (Xospata®)
- Gemtuzumab ozogamicin (Mylotarg™)
- Enasidenib (Idhifa®)
- Midostaurin (Rydapt®)
In addition, patients with blastic plasmacytoid dendritic cell neoplasm (BPDCN) who enrolled in a clinical trial at Roswell Park received treatment with tagraxofusp-erzs (Elzonris™) before it was approved by the FDA.
Available clinical trials
New clinical trials become available everyday. Talk to your oncologist about which ones might be right for your cancer. Learn more about our current clinical trials.