**Abstract**

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is the most common form of acute leukemia in elderly patients. Over the past four decades the basic therapeutic armamentarium was the standard cytotoxic treatment. The new insights in understanding the pathogenesis of AML was the momentum that revolutionized the treatment landscape in AML. The last five years unprecedented growth has been seen in the number of target therapy drugs for the treatment of AML. These new drugs did not just have a clinical benefit as single agents but also have improved AML patient outcomes if combined with conventional cytotoxic therapy. Here, we review recent advances in target-based therapy for patients with AML focusing on their mechanism of action and the results from already published clinical trials.

**Keywords:** acute myeloid leukemia, target therapy, FLT3 inhibitors, IDH inhibitors, pro-apoptotic agents, smoothened inhibitors, checkpoint inhibitors, CD33-targeted therapy, E-selectin inhibitors, Polo-like kinase inhibitors
