AML

For patients with an often-deadly form of leukemia, new research by Timothy J. Ley, MD, and colleagues suggests that lingering cancer-related mutations – detected after initial treatment with chemotherapy – are associated with an increased risk of relapse and poor survival.

A consortium of researchers led by the School of Medicine has identified virtually all of the major mutations that drive acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a fast-growing blood cancer in adults that often is difficult to treat. The dark lines in the image pictured show all of the major mutations for AML that occurred in one patient with the disease.

A new drug makes chemotherapy more effective in treating acute myeloid leukemia, a cancer of the white blood cells, according to John F. DiPersio, MD, PhD, and his colleagues at Washington University. Instead of attacking these cells directly, the drug helps drive them out of the bone marrow and into the bloodstream, where they are more vulnerable to chemotherapy.

The chemotherapy drugs required to push a common form of adult leukemia into remission may contribute to DNA damage that can lead to a relapse of the disease in some patients, findings of a new study suggest.

Researchers have discovered that a subtype of leukemia characterized by a poor prognosis is fueled by mutations in pathways distinctly different from a seemingly similar leukemia associated with a much better outcome.

Decoding the DNA of a woman who died of acute myeloid leukemia has led Washington University researchers to a gene that they found to be commonly altered in many patients who died quickly of the disease.