Patients with chronic myeloid leukemia, treated with imatinib, who have a 
durable complete molecular response, might remain in complete molecular response 
after stopping treatment. Previous reports of patients stopping treatment in 
complete molecular response have included only patients with a good response to 
imatinib. We describe 3 patients with stable complete molecular response on 
dasatinib treatment following imatinib failure. Two of the 3 patients remain in 
complete molecular response more than 12 months after stopping dasatinib. In 
these 2 patients we used highly sensitive patient-specific BCR-ABL1 DNA PCR to 
show that the leukemic clone remains detectable, as we have previously shown in 
imatinib-treated patients. Dasatinib-associated immunological phenomena, such as 
the emergence of clonal T-cell populations, were observed both in one patient 
who relapsed and in one patient in remission. Our results suggest that the 
characteristics of complete molecular response on dasatinib treatment may be 
similar to that achieved with imatinib, at least in patients with adverse 
disease features.