Advances in the therapy of chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

Chronic lymphocytic leukemia therapy has changed dramatically over the past decade, with recent studies supporting the use of fludarabine as the initial therapy for symptomatic disease. New findings relative to the use of fludarabine and complications arising from this therapy are reviewed. Exciting combination approaches using monoclonal antibodies such as rituximab or Campath-1H in combination with fludarabine offer the opportunity to improve the complete response rate further in chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Furthermore, the field of experimental therapeutics for chronic lymphocytic leukemia was advanced by the description of a new mouse model of human chronic lymphocytic leukemia and identification of several disrupted signal transduction pathways in this disease. The description of therapies that target AKT, protein kinase C, phosphodiesterase 4, mammalian target of rapamycin, histone deacetylase, and methyltransferase offer the opportunity to utilize molecularly targeted therapy for this disease. Such targeted approaches offer hope that we might be on the threshold to changing the natural history of chronic lymphocytic leukemia.