The present invention relates to the field of cancer therapy. Specifically, provided are methods of treating cancer in a subject having clinical signs of bone marrow homing of myeloid cells, including neutropenia, isolated neutropenia, a low percentage of peripheral blood blasts with or without a high percentage of bone marrow blasts, and/or a low ratio of peripheral blood blasts to bone marrow blasts, with a farnesyltransferase inhibitor (FTI) that include determining whether the subject is likely to be responsive to the FTI treatment based on hematological characteristics indicating bone marrow homing of myeloid cells.