A trial of dasatinib in patients with imatinib-resistant gastrointestinal stromal tumors found that the drug did not meet the criteria for clinical activity overall, but may be suitable for a subset of patients with phosphorylated SRC.

The tyrosine kinase inhibitor dasatinib is effective and well tolerated as a first- or second-line therapy for children with chronic myeloid leukemia in the chronic phase, research confirms.

Dasatinib may be dosed according to body weight and adverse reactions reported in at least 10% of pediatric patients include headache, nausea, and diarrhea.

medwireNews : Pleural effusion may be a positive sign during dasatinib treatment in patients with chronic phase chronic myeloid leukemia (CML–CP), suggests research published in Oncology Reports .

Japanese researchers say that a fecal occult blood test could help screen for treatment-induced hemorrhagic colitis in chronic myeloid leukemia patients taking dasatinib.

The compounds in question were the mTOR/PI3K inhibitors everolimus, temsirolimus, and alpelisib, the antimetabolites gemcitabine and decitabine, the mitotic inhibitor cabazitaxel, and the kinase inhibitors crizotinib and dasatinib.

Several other TKIs are currently FDA-approved for the therapy of patients with CML: nilotinib [8], dasatinib [9], bosutinib [10] and ponatinib [11].

Tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) treatment of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) can result in prolonged and deep responses in many patients. In such cases, can TKIs be safely discontinued to avoid adverse side effects and costs? Etab Atallah (Medical College of Wisconsin, USA) discusses the current issues surrounding TKI discontinuation in CML.

The patients were asked to halve their dose of imatinib, nilotinib or dasatinib, with a plan to discontinue treatment if remission was maintained after 13 months.

The team applied this strategy to data from 85 patients who had discontinued imatinib (75%), nilotinib (20%) or dasatinib (5%), 49 of whom restarted TKI therapy between 2.8 and 117.2 months.

In addition, dose escalation studies are ongoing for a once daily ABL001 dose and ABL001 given alongside nilotinib, imatinib or dasatinib, as well as for twice daily dosing in higher-risk patients with blast phase CML or Philadelphia chromosome-positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), Hughes explained.

Following imatinib treatment failure or disease progression, imatinib dose was escalated in 20.8% of the branded and 17.2% of the generic groups, with 2.1% versus 4.5% moving onto nilotinib, 0.9% versus 5.1% to dasatinib, and 0.9% versus 2.2% to hydroxyurea.