Peptide-vaccine treatment associated with imatinib in patients with residual CML disease is able to induce both immunologic response and molecular remission.

2517 Background: The main objective in the intent to “cure” chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is to obtain complete cytogenetic (CCR) and molecular remission (MR). Interferon-A and Imatinib have only partially achieved this goal. An alternative approach to target the residual disease is specific immunotherapy. We associated Imatinib and immunogenic peptides derived form the p210 b3a2 fusion protein in patients on Imatinib with stable disease at cytogenetic level. Methods: Ten patients with CML in chronic phase on Imatinib for a median time of 15.5 months (range 12–24) were enrolled. All patients were on their +2nd line treatment being resistant or refractory to IFN-based previous therapies. They presented with an unchanged residual disease from a median of 10 months (range 6–18) consisting of bone marrow Ph+ metaphases ranging from 2–43%. Vaccination included GM-CSF pre treatment and administration of 500 mcg of 5 different length(8–25 aa)peptides mixture of restricted for HLA class I and class II molecules,...