Douglas Tremblay, MD, on Venetoclax Plus HMA in Patients With CMML

Dr. Tremblay, of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, joins Blood Cancers Today to discuss the use of venetoclax in combination with hypomethylating agents (HMA) in chronic myelomonocytic leukemia (CMML).

The retrospective study evaluated the use of HMA and venetoclax in both CMML and CMML blast phase. While the combination yielded high response rates in both groups, there was no difference in survival.

The analysis also explored the role of this combination in transitioning patients to allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant. Specifically, 25% of patients with both CMML and CMML after blast transformation were able to transition to transplant, Dr. Tremblay noted.

“While I think that the results were kind of disappointing in terms of its real-world activity and in terms of prolonging survival, I do still think there’s a role for the combination in transitioning someone and bridging them to transplant,” he said.