MPAACT consortium uniting industry and academia in developing AML drugs

The Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) has announced progress in the Measurable residual disease Partnership and Alliance in Acute myeloid leukemia Clinical Treatment (MPAACT), an industry-led research alliance founded in 2018.

The set-up between Janssen Research & Development, Roche (ROG: SIX) subsidiary Genentech, Novartis (NOVN: VX), and Celgene, now wholly-owned by Bristol Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY), and recently expanded with additional members Amgen (Nasdaq: AMGN), AbbVie (NYSE: ABBV) and Kronos Bio (Nasdaq: KRON), is now advancing efforts to establish measurable residual disease (MRD) as a surrogate endpoint for overall survival in the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia (AML).

AML is a difficult to treat blood cancer with significant unmet medical need as one of the most common types of leukemias in adults and a five-year relative survival of less than 30%. Clinical trials for new therapies in AML are becoming increasingly lengthy to complete based on the traditional clinical endpoint of survival. MRD is a measure of the number of cancer cells that remain after chemotherapy in patients and its presence is associated with survival.