Development of plasma cell leukemia in a patient with chronic myeloid leukemia while on treatment with imatinib mesylate.

Plasma cell leukemia (PCL) is a rare and an aggressive form of plasma cell dyscrasias. We report a 67-year-old male with PCL which developed while on imatinib mesylate (IM) therapy 38 months after diagnosis of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). The patient has been treated successfully with bortezomib, melphalan and prednisolone. To our knowledge, only one case of PCL superimposed on Philadelphia positive CML has been reported in the literature and this was before the IM era.