A leukemia therapy developed at Ohio State is improving quality of life for patients by reducing treatment-related side effects. Second-generation drug acalabrutinib is improving outcomes for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), a previously incurable form of blood cancer. First-generation therapy ibrutinib changed the treatment of CLL by targeting the cancer cells through the ingestion of a daily pill. Unfortunately, ibrutinib also affected alternative targets in the body, causing significant side effects. Acalabrutinib reduces those side effects through a better focus on the CLL cells, allowing for often successful combinations with other therapies, says John Byrd, MD. “The exciting thing about acalabrutinib is, because it's more selective, we're able to combine it with other targeted drugs,” Byrd says. “We can give these two or three targeted drugs together for an abbreviated time period and have patients go in complete remission where we can't detect the leukemia in their bodies.”