The presence of internal tandem duplications (ITD) in the Fms-related tyrosine kinase 3 receptor (FLT3) has been associated with a poor prognosis in acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Over the past decade, FLT3 is a promising target in FLT3-ITD-positive AML. Sorafenib which is one of the commonly focused FLT3 inhibitors may improve outcome, but only few patients display long-term responses in previously reported cases, prompting the search for underlying resistance mechanisms and therapeutic strategies to overcome them. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first case report about sorafenib in combination with low-dose-homoharringtonine as a salvage therapy successfully administrated and got complete remission (CR) in primary refractory FLT3-ITD-positive AML. Our result demonstrates the combination of this two drugs may be a good choice for the primary refractory FLT3-ITD-positive AML patient, although cooperative studies of large numbers of these patients are needed to evaluate and optimize this combination.
Keywords: AML; FLT3; ITD; refractory; sorafenib.