Fast Facts: Treatment-Free Remission in Chronic Myeloid Leukemia

The tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) imatinib was the first treatment to specifically target cancer cells, rather than the relatively indiscriminate effects of conventional chemotherapy on any rapidly dividing cells. This concept of targeted treatment in cancer is one of the important advances in modern medicine in the last 30 years. Indeed, treatment with TKIs has transformed chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) from a cancer with a poor prognosis to one in which many patients can expect a normal life