(Press-News.org) MIAMI, FLORIDA (DEC. 1, 2025) – A new generation of targeted treatments and gentler chemotherapy options for older adults with a new diagnosis of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is driving better survival and cure rates. Led by Mikkael Sekeres, M.D., M.S., chief of the Division of Hematology at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, the updated 2025 American Society of Hematology (ASH) AML treatment guidelines, appear Dec. 1, 2025, in the journal Blood Advances.In addition, the updated guidelines will be presented Dec . 7 at the American Society of Hematology (ASH) annual meeting in Orlando.
"The landscape of AML treatment has changed dramatically with more effective therapies," said Sekeres. "Our clinical studies have led to FDA approval of three drugs to treat acute leukemia over the past two years." But incorporating these new drugs into patients' regimens is a long process.
A physician-scientist, Sekeres led the 2020 and updated 2025 official ASH AML guideline panels. The panels include leukemia experts, geriatricians and patients who reviewed and discussed the best available research. The guideline recommendations aim to walk patients and their doctors through the AML treatment decisions in a meaningful and relevant way.
For decades, the standard treatment for AML was intensive chemotherapy to destroy leukemia cells and induce remission rapidly. Even just 20 years ago, two-thirds of people over 65 didn't get access to chemotherapy.
“We developed these guidelines to mirror the experience of an older adult's conversations with their doctor as they're considering treatment. The very first of those conversations is whether or not a person should receive any treatment," said Sekeres. "We didn't shy away from hard questions that patients and doctors ask, and I'm really proud of that."
Over the last decade, treatments such as gentler chemotherapy regimens, low-dose treatments, targeted therapies, and immunotherapies have improved AML care. More older adults are achieving remission and even pursuing cures like bone marrow transplants.
While AML treatment is more personalized, the decisions are more complex. "We're tailoring therapy more and more for each patient based on their age, fitness and genetic profile," said Justin Watts, M.D., Sylvester’s chief of the leukemia section in the Division of Hematology. "Their genes tell us if they qualify for targeted therapies and can predict their risk level for relapse — so tell us if they need a transplant."
In most cases, older adults should be offered treatment for AML, not just supportive care, the new guidelines say. Patients who are healthy enough, especially those in their 60s or with favorable disease genetics, should still get intensive chemotherapy. If a patient isn't a candidate for intensive chemotherapy, they should consider lower-intensity options like hypomethylating agents (azacitidine or decitabine) or low-dose cytarabine. These treatments can be combined with venetoclax, a targeted therapy.
If genetic testing finds a specific gene change, older adults should be offered targeted therapies as part of their AML treatment plan. Patients with FLT3 mutations should receive a FLT3 inhibitor, and those with IDH1 or IDH2 mutations should receive a combination of azacitidine with targeted inhibitors, such as ivosidenib or venetoclax.
When a patient is in remission, they may be a candidate for a bone marrow transplant. Transplants can help older adults live longer, so the committee overwhelmingly recommends them for more patients with high-risk diseases, said Sekeres. Improvements in the transplant process and the use of donors who are not a perfect match have made this an option for more people. If a patient isn't a candidate for transplant, they should continue post-remission therapy with gentler combination treatments, the guidelines say. These maintenance therapies can help prevent relapse.
"Finally, we made recommendations regarding blood transfusions for people who are getting palliative care or hospice," Sekeres said. Many hospices deny people with leukemia transfusions, "so we very definitively said that we consider blood product transfusions as a part of palliative care and hospice.”
New, advanced tools are helping researchers better detect minimal residual disease and understand relapse risk — leading to better decisions about who needs a transplant, said Watts. "We're making steady progress every year by better defining patient groups," and finding the right treatments for them, he added. "We're moving more patients into the ‘favorable benefit group’ — the group of patients who do well on these new therapies and live longer."
about Sylvester research on the InventUM blog and follow @SylvesterCancer on X for the latest news on its research and care.
# # #
Authors: A complete list of authors is available in the paper.
Article Title: “American Society of Hematology 2025 guidelines for treating newly diagnosed acute myeloid leukemia in older adults”
DOI: 10.1182/bloodadvances.2025017934
Funding and Disclosures: Funding and disclosures are available in the article.
END
Microbiomes, the communities of microorganisms that live in and around us, play a vital role in everything from human health to soil fertility and climate regulation. But studying these tiny life forms, especially outside the human body, presents a major challenge: how do scientists share complex data across such a wide range of environments and disciplines?
To help solve this problem, a team of nearly 250 researchers from 28 countries has developed a new set of guidelines called STREAMS, short for Standards for Technical Reporting in Environmental and host-Associated Microbiome Studies. STREAMS builds on ...
Artificial intelligence systems that are designed with a biologically inspired architecture can simulate human brain activity before ever being trained on any data, according to new research from Johns Hopkins University.
The findings, published in Nature Machine Intelligence, challenge conventional approaches to building AI by prioritizing architectural design over the type of deep learning and training that takes months, costs billions of dollars and requires thousands of megawatts of energy.
“The way that the AI field is moving right now is to throw a bunch of data at the models and build compute resources the size of small cities. That ...
SINGAPORE, 1 December 2025 – Asia Pathogen Genomics Initiative (Asia PGI) today offered the first public preview of PathGen, an AI-powered sense-making and decision-making support platform of pathogen genomics and contextual data. Designed for public health practitioners, clinicians and industry, it can help detect emerging disease threats earlier, assess risks faster, and coordinate responses within and across borders, all without compromising countries’ ownership of their respective sovereign data. The objective is to strengthen health security across Asia and beyond, ...
Scientists have long known that bacteria come in many shapes and sizes, but understanding what those differences mean has remained a major challenge, especially for species that can’t be grown in the lab. Now, a new study led by Nina Wale, an Assistant Professor in MSU’s Department of Microbiology, Genetics, & Immunology, introduces a groundbreaking method that could change how researchers study bacterial diversity.
The research, published in mSphere, focuses on a tiny, unculturable pathogen called Pasteuria ramosa, which infects water-dwelling ...
Two new publications remap the understanding of reverse weathering in the scientific community. The Dauphin Island Sea Lab’s Senior Marine Scientist, Dr. Jeffrey Krause, played a key role in both projects, which include several collaborating institutions.
Reverse weathering is one of the ocean’s most important yet least understood geochemical processes. During this natural process, dissolved minerals and chemicals combine to form new clay minerals in seafloor sediments. These reactions greatly influence the marine silicon cycle and Earth’s climate because they take dissolved ...
Ask someone on Earth for the time and they can give you an exact answer, thanks to our planet’s intricate timekeeping system, built with atomic clocks, GPS satellites and high-speed telecommunications networks.
However, Einstein showed us that clocks don’t tick at the same rate across the universe. Clocks will run slightly faster or slower depending on the strength of gravity in their environment, making it tricky to synchronize our watches here on Earth, let alone across the vast solar system. If humans want to establish a long-term presence on the red planet, scientists ...
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Rocks that stood out as light-colored dots on the reddish-orange surface of Mars now are the latest evidence that areas of the small planet may have once supported wet oases with humid climates and heavy rainfall comparable to tropical climates on Earth.
The rocks discovered by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover are white, aluminum-rich kaolinite clay, which forms on Earth after rocks and sediment are leached of all other minerals by millions of years of a wet, rainy climate.
These ...
Researchers have unveiled a new catalyst made from renewable plant waste that could significantly accelerate clean hydrogen production. The innovative material, created by embedding nickel oxide and iron oxide nanoparticles into lignin-derived carbon fibers, boosts the efficiency and stability of the oxygen evolution reaction, a key step in water electrolysis.
The study, published in Biochar X, demonstrates that the new catalyst achieves a low overpotential of 250 mV at 10 mA cm² and maintains strong performance for over 50 hours at high current density. These results suggest a promising path toward cost-effective and sustainable ...
EL PASO, Texas (Dec. 1, 2025) – Scientists at The University of Texas at El Paso have found a promising new target in the fight against high-grade serous carcinoma, an aggressive form of ovarian cancer. Less than 50 percent of women survive five years after diagnosis, according to the team.
A new study published in the journal Scientific Reports shows that Claudin-4, a protein that increases in ovarian cancer, may be the culprit behind the cancer’s resistance, helping tumors both survive ...
N,N-diethyl-m-toluamide, better known as DEET, is one of the world’s most widely used insect repellents – and it is now turning up in rivers, lakes, groundwater and even drinking water around the globe, according to a new review by an international research team. The authors warn that while DEET helps protect millions of people from mosquito-borne diseases, its growing footprint in aquatic environments raises questions about long‑term ecological and health risks.
“We shouldn’t wait for a crisis”
“DEET has been a public‑health success story for decades, but our analysis shows it is also becoming a quiet, global water contaminant,” said lead ...
