Novartis recently announced results from its CML SUN at the 2023 European Hematology Association (EHA) Hybrid Congress.

“CML SUN was designed to address critical unanswered questions amongst people living with chronic myeloid leukemia and physicians, such as approach to treatment options, differences in efficacy and tolerability priorities, as well as effectiveness around communicating goals to one another,” says CML SUN Steering Committee member and study author Fabian Lang, MD, Goethe University Hospital, Frankfurt, Germany.

“As CML has, in many ways, become a chronic disease thanks to available treatments, it’s important to understand patient and physician priorities, especially as they change across lines of therapy. These CML SUN insights will help us continue to evolve how CML is managed.”

Across 11 countries, similar themes emerged from the data around treatment goals, joint decision-making, and treatment satisfaction. Specifically:

In their goals for treatment, patients focus on stopping or slowing disease progression, maintaining/improving QoL, and minimizing/managing side effects, while physicians place greater emphasis on treatment efficacy.

“People living with chronic myeloid leukemia must be able to have open and honest conversations with their doctors about their treatment goals, how medication side effects impact their lives, as well as their emotional and mental well-being,” explained Lisa Machado, CML SUN Steering Committee member, founder of the Canadian CML Network and executive producer of Healthing.ca. “We have come a long way in terms of how we treat CML, with innovative therapies making it possible for people to live longer and better lives with this disease. But there's still more work to be done, especially when it comes to ensuring the relationships between doctors and patients are based on shared decision-making, a clear understanding of quality of life needs and expectations for the future.”

These results are based on data from Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain, UK, and USA. Final analyses of the data are expected to be published later in the year.