Chronic Myeloid Leukemia, BCR/ABL-Positive

A phase 2, interventional, randomized unblinded study will be conducted in newly diagnosed CP CML patients, to investigate the efficacy and the safety of asciminib at a dose of 80 mg QD as single agent (arm A) or 40 mg BID in combination with nilotinib 300 mg BID (arm B). All patients in both arm A and arm B will be treated for a minimum of 2 years (core phase). If they will have achieved a DMR (MR4), or if it will be in the interest of the patient, the treatment will be continued. During the consolidation phase (2 years) asciminib will be continued at the same dose in both arms; in the combination arm the nilotinib dose will be reduced to 300 mg daily. The patients maintaining a stable MR4 up to the end of the fourth year will discontinue the treatment (TFR phase). The rate of TFR at 5 year (1 year after discontinuation) will be evaluated.

In recent years, the goal of stopping drug therapy, also known as treatment-free remission (TFR), is emerging as one of the management goals of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) therapy. Because there is no available data on Asian patients with CML undergoing tyrosine kinase inhibitor discontinuation (TKI), the investigators plan to recruit chronic phase CML patients with deep treatment response and good medical compliance in Taiwan to evaluate the feasibility, safety and clinical consequences of TKI discontinuation.