HKU develops novel combination therapy to reduce leukaemia relapse rate
發佈日期: 2026-05-20 22:27
TVB News
A research team from the University of Hong Kong has pioneered a combination therapy to improve treatment outcomes and survival chances in patients with acute myeloid leukaemia.
Samantha Li reports.
Acute myeloid leukaemia is a lethal blood cancer, with an annual average of about 300 new cases in the city.
Among these, "FLT3" is the most common genetic mutation, and patients respond poorly to traditional treatments, with a high relapse rate.
56-year-old Mr. Szeto was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia in 2017.
He took conventional chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant.
Unfortunately, he suffered a relapse the following year.
He then received a four-month combination therapy called "QUIZOM,"which involves injecting two medicines to suppress "FLT3" and protein translation respectively.
He recalled that during his treatment, he just had to sit for three hours while the medication was injected.
His conditions improved, and he noted that the combination therapy produced minimal side effects.
Medical examination later detected only 0.026 percent of abnormal cells.
Between 2017 and 2020, the HKU team recruited 40 patients, who did not respond well to chemotherapy, to undergo the combination therapy, achieving a composite complete remission rate of 83 percent.
Prof. ANSKAR LEUNG, Chair Professor in Department of Medicine, School of Clinical Medicine, HKUMed said, "It's basically a discovery, because when we first started it, we didn't expect it to be this good and any change on the immune system. But we did a lot of laboratory studies and showing that if you combine the two drugs together. You actually activate the immune system, in particular the T-cells become activated."
The research team says the study demonstrated the clinical potential of QUIZOM, enabling more high-risk patients to become eligible for hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.
