“Flt3-Itd acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a high-impact disease. Celebrating new innovation milestones, talking about better prognosis and reducing recurrence of such an important disease is heart-opening. But in my opinion, a change of pace is needed in the care of society, especially the elderly.” Therefore, Davide Petruzzelli, president of the association ‘Aladdin’s Lamp Ets’, commented on the recent green light from the Medicines Agency (Aifa) for the replacement of quizartinib, the first drug launched in Italy by Daiichi Sankyo in the field of hematology. This is a new therapeutic option for newly diagnosed Flt3-Itd positive AML, an aggressive form associated with a higher risk of recurrence and poor prognosis.
The approval was based on the results of the phase 3 Quantum-First study, published in The Lancet, which showed that the addition of quizartinib to standard high-dose chemotherapy, with or without consolidation allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, followed by maintenance monotherapy for up to approximately 3 years, significantly improved overall survival and reduced the risk of death by 22% compared with standard chemotherapy.
“The goal – Petruzzelli underlines – is to live a quality life. I think it is an achievable goal, also thanks to psychological support, an aspect that has been organized from an operational point of view but is actually not yet feasible. It is therefore necessary to take action to realize what we have written everywhere, from the oncology plan onwards”. In fact, there is a “National Network of Rare Tumors (Rntr), which was approved at the State-Territory Conference, but with a few exceptions, it has not been implemented.” Rntr “describes the hubs and spoke centers, defines who can treat what and in what way – he explains – and also explains how patients can enter the Network. On paper we have everything, in practice what remains to be defined is what has been identified in the patient’s claim”. These are aspects that illustrate the need to “move to higher institutional networks – he concludes – which will make access to services more homogeneous”.
