Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is characterized by a high degree of genetic variability and interpatient heterogeneity. In the last decade, novel alterations have been described. Some of them impact on the prognosis and evolution of patients. The approval of BTK inhibitors, PI3K inhibitors and Bcl-2 inhibitors has drastically changed the treatment of patients with CLL. The effect of these new targeted therapies has been widely analyzed in TP53-mutated cases, but few data exist about the response of patients carrying other recurrent mutations. In this review, we describe the biological pathways recurrently altered in CLL that might have an impact on the response to these new therapies together with the possibility to use new actionable targets to optimize treatment responses.
Keywords: MAPK; NOTCH1; SF3B1; chronic lymphocytic leukemia; toll-like receptor (TLR).