Current Research

Research for CLL is ongoing. The following advances may still be under investigation in clinical trials and may not be approved or available at this time. Always discuss all diagnostic and treatment options with your doctor.

• Assessment of the benefit of different combinations of chemotherapy and monoclonal antibody therapy to increase the number of patients with CRs and potentially prolong survival
  
  
• Identification of new drugs for CLL treatment; these studies are usually done initially in patients in whom standard treatment is no longer working.
  
  
• Finding methods of decreasing the side effects of stem cell transplantation using reduced intensity transplantation, which may allow the use of transplantation for more patients
  
  
• Identification of changes in the genetic composition of the CLL cells, which may help predict outcome, select among different therapies, and provide insight into the cause of the disease. Examples include measuring the frequency of immunoglobulin mutations of the CLL cells, determining the chromosomal abnormalities detected in the CLL cells, and detecting a protein called Zap70 on the surface of the CLL cells. There is some information suggesting that these markers can predict the likelihood that the disease may worsen more rapidly, but there is considerable variation among different patients, and it is too early to use these tests to make decisions about when to begin treatment and the type of treatment to use.
  
  
• Clinical trials in patients with early-stage CLL to determine whether early treatment is superior to the watch-and-wait approach
  
  
• Clinical trials to evaluate different approaches to ALLO transplantation in selected patients whose CLL is not responding adequately to chemotherapy

Most cancer centers are actively involved in clinical trials aimed at increasing the rate of cure from CLL. The National Cancer Institute’s Clinical Trials Cooperative Group Program sponsors many of these studies. Please talk with your doctor about these ongoing clinical trials.