Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a complex disease with an aggressive clinical course and high mortality rate. The standard of care for patients has only changed minimally over the past 40 years. However, potentially useful agents have moved from bench to bedside with the potential to revolutionize therapeutic strategies. As such, cell-cycle inhibitors have been discussed as alternative treatment options for AML. In this review, we focus on cyclin-dependent kinase 6 (CDK6) emerging as a key molecule with distinct functions in different subsets of AML. CDK6 exerts its effects in a kinase-dependent and -independent manner which is of clinical significance as current inhibitors only target the enzymatic activity.
Keywords: AML; CDK6; FLT3; JAK2-V617F; MLL-AF9; RUNX1-ETO; palbociclib.