Date Time
Risk-directed childhood leukemia treatment takes a step forward
Corresponding author Ching-Hon Pui, M.D., St. Jude Oncology Department chair, helped discover how genomic analysis can improve outcomes for children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
Comprehensive genomic analyses have helped researchers identify more than 20 subtypes of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) based on the genetic mutations that drive the disease. Research led by St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists showed that combining these data with leukemia response measurements improves prediction of relapse risk.
Currently, patients’ response to treatment influences the type of therapy administered for ALL. This risk-directed approach involves assessing minimal residual disease, the level of leukemic cells in the blood or bone marrow of patients at defined points during treatment
E-Mail
IMAGE: Xiaotu Ma, Ph.D., St. Jude Computational Biology, and Jeffery Klco, M.D., Ph.D., St. Jude Pathology view more
Credit: St. Jude Children s Research Hospital
Children treated for cancer with approaches such as chemotherapy can develop therapy-related myeloid neoplasms (a second type of cancer) with a dismal prognosis. Scientists at St. Jude Children s Research Hospital have characterized the genomic abnormalities of 84 such myeloid neoplasms, with potential implications for early interventions to stop the disease. A paper detailing the work was published today in
Nature Communications.
The somatic (cancer) and germline (inherited) genomic alterations that drive therapy-related myeloid neoplasms in children have not been comprehensively described, until now. The researchers used a variety of sequencing techniques (whole exome, whole genome and RNA) to characterize the genomic profile of 84 pediatric therapy-related myeloid neoplasms. The data came from