ALL is really a group of related diseases, or subtypes. Therefore, your treatment options depend upon your subtype and other factors. You may have more than one type of treatment. These include:
Chemotherapy, the use of anticancer drugs in combination, generally over a couple of years. Agents used for ALL include:
__cyclophosphamide (Cytoxan)
__cytarabine (Cytosar)
__daunorubicin (Cerubidine) or doxorubicin (Adriamycin)
__etoposide (VP-16)
__L-asparaginace (Elspar) or PEG-L-asapraginase (Oncaspar)
__6-mercaptopurine (6-MP, Purinethol)
__methotrexate (Rheumatrex, Trexall)
__methoterate oral (Xatmep)
__steroids (prednisone, dexamethasone)
__teniposide (Vumon
__vincristine (Oncovin)
1)Targeted therapy, drugs that target specific parts of cancer cells and tend to have fewer or less severe side effects than chemotherapy; examples include blinatumomab (Blincyto), dasatinib (Sprycel), imatinib (Gleevec), and nilotinib (Tasigna), ponatinib (Iclusig), which attack cells with the Philadelphia chromosome.
2)Radiation therapy, the use of high-energy radiation to kill cancer cells; this is not used often for ALL, but may be used to treat leukemia in the brain or bone, for example, or before a stem cell transplant.
3)A bone marrow transplant, which involves use of high doses of chemotherapy and possibly radiation followed by a transplant of bone-forming stem cells. Stem cells usually come from a donor, or less likely, from your own bone marrow or peripheral blood. If you cannot tolerate high doses of chemotherapy and radiation, lower doses may be used with a "mini-transplant."