Dr. John Pagel provides an update on the explosion of new targeted biological therapies for treating chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), at the American Society of Hematology (ASH) 2013 Annual Meeting. These new treatments are offering new hope especially to patients with genetic abnormalities that made them more difficult to treat. These new drugs often work as well for high risk patients, possibly with just a shorter duration of remission than those at a lower risk. One example is GA101, a more potent and improved version of the commonly used Rituximab. The majority of CLL treatment is often a combination of therapies, but is evolving to less combinations involving chemotherapy, and more with various biological therapies. Dr. Pagel gave an example of a clinical trial of patients given Rituximab with either a placebo or Idelalisib (GS1101). The study was stopped early due to the overwhelming success, and all placebo patients were switched to Idelalisib.