The iron replacement drug Feraheme as a leukemia therapy

INDICATION: Acute myelogenous leukemia (AML)

Patient sample and mouse studies suggest Feraheme ferumoxytol could help treat AML with low ferroportin levels. In primary AML blasts and progenitor cells, levels of ferroportin were lower than in progenitor cells from bone marrow samples of healthy volunteers. In a mouse model of AML, Feraheme decreased numbers of leukemic blasts in the blood, bone marrow and spleen and increased survival compared with vehicle. In patient-derived xenograft (PDX) mouse models of AML, Feraheme decreased the numbers of leukemic cells in models whose AML cells had low ferroportin levels compared with vehicle, whereas Feraheme had no effect in PDX models whose AML cells had high ferroportin levels. Next steps include testing Feraheme in animal models of solid tumors...