In patients whose cancer is primarily caused by a specific mutation, tests which enable the determination of variant allele frequency (VAF) provide a useful means to assess the depth of treatment response relative to mutational burden. In this insightful interview, Mark Levis, MD, PhD, of Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, Baltimore, MD, discusses the assays that his group developed to measure VAF in patients with FLT3-mutated acute myeloid leukemia (AML), which utilize next-generation sequencing and capillary electrophoresis. These assays were used in a subpopulation from the CHRYSALIS study (NCT02014558), which tested the FLT3 inhibitor gilteritinib, with results presented at the American Society of Hematology (ASH) 2017 Annual Meeting and Exposition in Atlanta, GA. Speaking from the meeting, Dr Levis also discusses the expansion of studies using the assay.
Assaying FLT3 variant allele frequency in AML to determine response to treatment
