Mentor Name: Caitlin Elgarten

While acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is the second most common pediatric hematologic malignancy, it is unfortunately responsible for more than half of the deaths due to pediatric leukemia in the United States. And although many patients are able to achieve an initial remission, as many as half relapse and outcomes after relapse are suboptimal. While there have been improvements of Overall Survival (OS), limited research explores the selection of the optimal post-relapse therapy. Dr. Elgarten and her colleagues have established a large multi-institution cohort of pediatric AML patients with detailed information about their treatment. Previous findings from this cohort indicate that while the most commonly used re-induction regimen was fludarabine and cytarabine, there is still substantial variability in the selection of reinduction regimens, underscoring the need for additional research. Furthermore, initial data suggest worse OS with a non-intensive approach, but additional research is needed to determine the validity of this finding across patient groups. During this summer research experience, we will contribute to this established cohort through manual chart abstraction to help expand the data necessary for Dr. Elgarten’s pediatric AML research. This data collection will include relevant information about chemotherapy and patient characteristics. This additional data collection will facilitate more granular comparisons among specific treatment regimens to inform optimal regimen selection for patients with relapsed AML. In addition, patients with a first relapse of AML likely represent a disease population distinct from those with primary refractory disease; however these populations are frequently grouped together due to small numbers. We intend to perform analyses in these two cohorts separately to identify which regimens may work best to achieve remission, get to transplant, and result in superior long term overall survival.