Prediction of clinical response to venetoclax plus decitabine in AML using a 7-day ex vivo assay

The combination of venetoclax (VEN) and a hypomethylating agent (HMA) such as decitabine (DEC) is frequently used in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) for patients unfit for standard chemotherapy. However, there is a subset of patients who do not clinically respond to such combination therapies. To identify VEN + HMA non- responders prior to treatment we developed an assay on our automated, high throughput (HTS) ex vivo drug sensitivity platform to predict how a given patient will clinically respond to DEC + VEN within an ongoing, open label, phase II clinical trial (NCT03404193) for patients with newly diagnosed elderly/unfit or relapsed/refractory (R/R) AML.