Just a quick post because this issue seems to be topical at the moment. CR doesn’t mean total eradication, it just means the cancer can’t be detected with the standard assay method for that cancer. In the case of AML, CR means the cancer (blasts) have been reduced below 5% of the bone marrow cells [1]. You can be in CR and still have many billions of cancer cells inside your body and you will relapse at some point. This why despite the CR rate being as high as 80% in treatment the 5 year survival is less than 30% [2].
This is also why the AML field is moving towards using Measurable Residual Disease status (MRD) as a better diagnostic test for treatment. In the case of AML there is no difference in the two year relapse rate for patients (after a stem cell transplant) between those that are not in CR and those who are in CR but still MRD(+). CR is not really a useful tool anymore in predicting patient survival over the longer term.
I should add that only those patients that get a stem cell transplant (bone marrow transplant) have any chance of being cured. As far as I am aware there has only been one person cured of AML in the absence of a stem cell transplant and even this one case is controversial.
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