“When patients are on clinical trials at Cleveland Clinic, we are dotting all the Is and crossing all the Ts twice,” says Sophia Balderman, MD. “Then, if patients have other issues, we don’t have to send them to outside providers for their needs. We have all the resources here at Cleveland Clinic.”
After patients with myelodysplastic neoplasms (MDS) and acute myeloid leukemia (AML) undergo bone marrow transplants and put in the work to heal, a significant proportion of patients ultimately experience disease relapse within five years. Not only is this emotionally devastating, but it also carries a very poor prognosis.
Sophia Balderman, MD, is hoping to decrease the number of patients who relapse from these awful diseases by using current medications in a new way. She is using a specific dosing and scheduling regimen that has not been studied previously in patients who have gone through bone marrow transplantation.
“We want to use a combination of two drugs that we are already familiar with using, and we believe that the dosage we’re proposing will be very well tolerated by patients,” says Dr. Balderman. “It will also be easily accessible to people in the outpatient setting. They won’t have to come into the hospital to get these therapies.”
Her goal is to prevent the diseases from coming back in patients that are high risk. “If the outcome of this work leads to a new therapy for patients that is effective and keeps them from having relapsed AML or MDS, that would be incredibly inspiring, humbling and wonderful,” says Dr. Balderman.
100% For The Cure
