Dasatinib: a guide to its use in chronic myeloid leukemia in the EU.

Oral dasatinib (Sprycel(®)) is effective in the treatment of patients with newly diagnosed chronic-phase chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) or imatinib-resistant or imatinib-intolerant chronic-phase, accelerated-phase, or blast-phase CML. In particular, dasatinib is associated with better and faster responses than imatinib in patients with newly diagnosed chronic-phase CML. The response to dasatinib appears to be maintained in the longer-term. Dasatinib has an acceptable tolerability profile; it is associated with myelosuppression, with fluid retention being the most common nonhematologic adverse event. Thus, dasatinib is a highly effective, once-daily therapy for the first-line treatment of patients with chronic-phase CML and for the second-line treatment of imatinib-resistant or imatinib-intolerant CML.