Intensified Therapy for Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Chemotherapy for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) has long been the prototype for the intensive chemotherapy now widely used in the treatment of many cancers. It has been more than 25 years since Ellison et al. first showed that cytarabine could prolong survival substantially among patients with AML1. Since that time, standard therapy, with induction and consolidation phases, has been synonymous with the most intense treatment possible for this once uniformly fatal disease.In the past 10 years, the treatment that follows the induction of remission has intensified progressively, with encouraging results. For example, when performed during the first remission, . . .