STAT3 and chronic myelogenous leukemia, BCR-ABL1 positive: 2016; Xu et al. 2017). Our previous results have suggested the synergistic effects of CPT and imatinib on the apoptosis induction in CML cells by STAT3 and eIF4E inhibition (Ge et al. 2015a). However, the combination effects between CPT and the second-generation TKIs remain unclear. Furthermore, there is little information investigating the in vivo anti leukaemia effect of CPT and imatinib and its underlying mechanism.