http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. 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. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-01-chemotherapy-leukemia-relapse.html Cancer Wed, 11 Jan 2012 13:00:04 EST news245504668 Cancer researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) have carried out the first comprehensive study of the changes seen in the DNA of a patient with mast cell leukemia (MCL), an extremely aggressive subtype of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) with a very poor prognosis. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-12-comprehensive-dna-mast-cell-leukemia.html Cancer Fri, 16 Dec 2011 10:29:24 EST news243253753 (Medical Xpress) -- Parents, siblings and children of patients with the most common form of acute leukemia do not run a higher risk of developing the disease as was once believed, according to a new study from the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-12-higher-acute-leukaemia-relatives.html Cancer Thu, 15 Dec 2011 07:43:38 EST news243157402 A large-scale analysis of patients whose myelodysplastic syndrome is related to earlier cancer treatment overturns the notion that all of them have a poor prognosis, researchers from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center report at the 53rd Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-12-prognostic-mds-prior-cancer-therapy.html Cancer Tue, 13 Dec 2011 11:00:02 EST news242995787 Adding a drug that activates genes to frontline combination therapy for acute myeloid leukemia resulted in an 85 percent remission rate after initial treatment, researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center reported at the 53rd Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-12-aml-patients-high-response-vorinostat.html Cancer Tue, 13 Dec 2011 03:49:23 EST news242970551 Older people with acute myeloid leukemia and normal looking chromosomes in their cancer cells have a higher risk of recurrence if they have mutations in a gene called ASXL1, according to a new study by researchers at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James). http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-12-gene-mutation-high-recurrence-older.html Cancer Mon, 12 Dec 2011 16:16:48 EST news242929001 One kind of leukemia sometimes masquerades as another, according to a study published online this week in the Journal of Experimental Medicine. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-12-two-faced-leukemia.html Cancer Mon, 12 Dec 2011 12:41:31 EST news242916079 Human stem cells aren't immune to the aging process, according to scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The researchers studied hematopoietic stem cells, which create the cells that comprise the blood and immune system. Understanding when and how these stem cells begin to falter as the years pass may explain why some diseases, such as acute myeloid leukemia, increase in prevalence with age, and also why elderly people tend to be more vulnerable to infections such as colds and the flu. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-aging-stem-cells-higher-prevalence.html Medical research Mon, 28 Nov 2011 15:00:06 EST news241713853 A new genetic defect that predisposes people to acute myeloid leukemia and myelodysplasia has been discovered. The mutations were found in the GATA2 gene. Among its several regulatory roles, the gene acts as a master control during the transition of primitive blood-forming cells into white blood cells. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-09-gene-defect-predisposes-people-leukemia.html Genetics Sun, 04 Sep 2011 13:01:42 EST news234359162 Cancer scientists have long debated whether all cells within a tumour are equal or whether some cancer cells are more potent - a question that has been highly investigated in experimental models in the last decade. Research published today in Nature Medicine focuses on patients and shows that acute myeloid leukemia (AML) contains rare cells with stem cell properties, called leukemia stem cells (LSC), that are better at predicting clinical outcome than the majority of AML cells, showing for the first time that LSCs are significant not just in experimental models but also in patients. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-08-clinical-importance-leukemia-stem-cells.html Cancer Sun, 28 Aug 2011 13:00:05 EST news233754497 Monika McBride has acute myeloid leukemia, a life-threatening blood cancer that requires six months of intensive chemotherapy. Three days before her third treatment, however, a nurse called to cancel her appointment: Her doctor had run out of the drug. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-08-drug-short-endangering-patients.html Medications Fri, 19 Aug 2011 10:40:01 EST news232968023 According to a study published in Blood, the Journal of the American Society of Hematology (ASH), researchers have reported that administration of granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF), a drug that releases stem cells from the bone marrow into the blood, is unlikely to put healthy stem cell donors at risk for later development of abnormalities involving loss or gains of chromosomes that have been linked to hematologic disorders such as myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) and acute myeloid leukemia (AML). http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-08-stem-cell-mobilization-therapy-safe.html Medical research Thu, 11 Aug 2011 12:40:07 EST news232283023 Scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) and five other institutions have used an unconventional approach to cancer drug discovery to identify a new potential treatment for acute myeloid leukemia (AML). As reported in Nature online on August 3, the scientists have pinpointed a protein called Brd4 as a novel drug target for AML, an aggressive blood cancer that is currently incurable in 70% of patients. Using a drug compound that inhibits the activity of Brd4, the scientists were able to suppress the disease in experimental models. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-08-unconventional-cancer-powerful-drug-candidate.html Cancer Wed, 03 Aug 2011 13:30:07 EST news231596380 Bone marrow transplant survival more than doubled in recent years for young, high-risk leukemia patients treated at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, with patients who lacked genetically matched donors recording the most significant gains. The results are believed to be the best ever reported for leukemia patients who underwent bone marrow transplantation. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-07-bone-marrow-transplant-survival-young.html Medical research Thu, 14 Jul 2011 11:30:01 EST news229860377 A new discovery in mice by researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center may one day allow doctors to spare some patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) from toxic treatments, while also opening the door for new therapeutic research. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-05-reveals-personalized-approach-treatment-aml.html Cancer Mon, 16 May 2011 04:11:16 EST news224737849 A new study by the NYU Cancer Institute, an NCI-designated cancer center, sheds light on the origins of myeloid leukemia, a type of blood cancer that affects children and adults. The researchers discovered that novel mutations in an intracellular communication pathway called Notch led to the cancer, pointing to a potential new target for treating this disease. Notch has already been implicated in another type of blood cancer called T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, but the new research found an unexpected role for it in myeloid leukemia. The study is published in the May 12, 2011 issue of the journal Nature. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-05-reveals-cancer-affecting-blood-bone.html Cancer Thu, 12 May 2011 10:15:33 EST news224414086