Afaf Osman, MD, Shares Exciting Sessions on Leukemia From ASH

Afaf Osman, MD, an Assistant Professor at the University of Utah Huntsman Cancer Center specializing in myeloid malignancies, preleukemia conditions, and myelodysplastic syndromes, describes the trials and treatments she’s most excited about at the 65th American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition.

“I think in the myeloid world, we are all excited about menin inhibitors for leukemia patients, specifically for patients with KMT2A-rearranged myeloid leukemia and NPM1-mutated myeloid leukemia,” she said.

Dr. Osman mentioned that there are several menin inhibitors in development, and she highlighted important trials presented at ASH such as the SAVE and AUGMENT-101 trials, which both study revumenib as a targeted therapy for relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia.

“[Revumenib] is being tested as both monotherapy and in combination with oral cytokine and venetoclax, and I think that’s really exciting,” Dr. Osman shared.

Dr. Osman also said that she is excited about the monoclonal antibody axatilimab, which was studied as a treatment for graft-versus-host disease and is the focus of the plenary session at ASH.

“Graft-versus-host disease is just terrible when it happens in the post-transplant population, and you have this great treatment that can cure patients in the form of allogeneic stem cell transplant. But then if you end up with a graft-versus-host disease, it can be really detrimental and it can really worsen the quality of life of these patients,” Dr. Osman explained.