00:00For many years, our ability to evaluate the response to treatments was entrusted to the microscope.
00:13But a microscope has a sensitivity, the ability to identify the persistence of leucemic cells in the bone marrow of a patient not higher than 1%.
00:25So we could define in remission a patient who still had an important amount of disease.
00:33Molecular technologies today allow us to identify the persistence of a leucemic cell in 100,000, up to 1 million.
00:45This allows us to predict the persistence of the disease and, unfortunately, its ability to lead to the recidivism of the patient, perhaps after months or years.
00:58This is a very important phase in the therapy strategy because this is the phase in which we can intervene early with the aim of eradicating,
01:10that is, to make the last leucemic cell disappear.
01:14So this is the centrality of the evaluations of this minimal residual disease, which is so important in the history of the care of these patients.
01:26The goal today is healing, and it is formidable to be able to affirm this even in adult patients.
01:36Today we employ up to 65-year-old patients in research protocols, with the aim of bringing them to healing.
01:45Treatment strategies must take into account the great biological heterogeneity.
01:52Under the name of acute lymphoblastic leukemia, many different types of diseases are hidden.
01:59And so, starting from the initial characterization of the disease, the best therapeutic path can be defined,
02:09the choice of transplant or the choice of innovative therapies, such as those of which we can speak today enthusiastically.
Comments