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(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Scientists uncovered a gene that may help identify young leukemia survivors at risk of a relapse.
Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the most common type of childhood cancer, affecting about one in 29,000 each year. Current treatments have put the cure rates close to 80 percent; however, they can cause substantial side effects. Also, even with treatment, only 30 percent of children whose cancers return will live for five more years.
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Researchers have identified mutations in the gene called IKZF1 or IKAROS that predict a high likelihood of relapse in children with ALL. Knowing the risk of relapse would help doctors modify treatment plans accordingly, but until now there has been no good marker for predicting outcome.
"In the long term, our goal is to develop effective therapeutic interventions, directed toward vulnerabilities that leukemia cells acquire as a result of the genomic abnormalities identified through the TARGET initiative," Malcolm Smith, M.D., Ph.D., of the National Cancer Institute's Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program, was quoted as saying.
Researchers say these findings will help provide the basis for future diagnostic tests to determine the risk of treatment failure, but more research needs to be done to find out how changes in the gene leads to relapse.
SOURCE: New England Journal of Medicine, published online January 7, 2009
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