Consolidation Treatment With Ponatinib 15 mg on Treatment Free-Remission Rate in Patients With Chronic Myeloid Leukemia

Ponatinib has shown to induce deeper molecular responses compared with imatinib. Therefore, ponatinib treatment could increase the proportion of patients who could discontinue treatment successfully. This strategy that includes treatment change to a more powerful treatment before treatment discontinuation has not been evaluated in any of the previous clinical trials, and will be explored in the current study. In this framework, the purpose is to determine the rate of successful treatment-free remission (TFR) within the first 48 weeks following cessation of treatment in patients who achieved Molecular Response 4 (MR4) on imatinib and maintained MR4 on ponatinib after a switch from imatinib. Eligible patients have been previously treated with imatinib as unique tyrosine kinase inhibitor (at least 4 years) and have documented MR4 (at least 12 months) at the time of switch to ponatinib to study entry.