By BOYD A. NIES, GERALD P. BODEY, Louis B. THOMAS, GEORGE BRECHER AND E fIL J. FREIREICH F OLLOWING the successful treatment of a patient with acute leukemia, evidence of residual leukemia by bone marrow, peripheral blood, or physical examination is often absent. Invariably, however, infiltration of the bone marrow by leukemic cells recurs. Whether a few undetectable leukemic cells remain durin...

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a heterogeneous and intrinsically resistant stem cell neoplasm, occurring in about 14 000 patients the US annually. AML characterized by unbridled proliferation of progenitor cells block normal differentiation. Unfortunately, despite recent advances treatment, prognosis poor for almost all older adults half under age 60. Thus, novel effective therapies are urgent...

Despite high interests on microenvironmental regulation of leukemic cells, little is known for bone marrow (BM) niche in leukemia patients. Our recent study on BMs of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients showed that the mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) are altered during leukemic conditions in a clinical course-dependent manner. Leukemic blasts caused reprogramming of transcriptomes in MSCs an...

Patients with mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) may present with either nodal or leukemic disease. The molecular determinants underlying this different biologic behavior are not known. This study compared the pattern of genetic abnormalities in patients with nodal and leukemic phases of MCL using comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) for specific gene lo...

Leukemic cells are highly sensitive to chemotherapeutic agents. A reduction of the leukemic burden is easily achieved by chemotherapy in most cases. However, it is difficult to reduce the number of leukemic cells to such an extent that a regrowth does not occur and the patient is cured. Traditionally the therapy of acute leukemia is divided into induction and post remission therapy. The aim of ...

UNLABELLED Background Aberrant or impaired repair of double-strand DNA breaks is a common feature of de novo acute myeloid leukemia and myelodysplastic syndromes. Since poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitors have been recently shown to selectively target cells with defects in double-strand DNA repair, the aim of this study was to explore the possibility of exploiting defects in DNA repa...

Successful induction of in vitro differentiation and immunoglobulin synthesis of the leukemic lymphocytes was carried out in two cases of chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Few plasma cells and little specific Ig secretion were detected in the cultures of isolated leukemic B cells in either the presence or the absence of autologous T cells. Up to 30% of the leukemic B cells matured to plasma cells, ...

In vitro and in vivo resistance to prednisolone are predictive for an adverse prognosis in pediatric precursor B-acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Causes of resistance are still poorly understood. In this study, we observed that prednisolone exposure of prednisolone-sensitive patients' leukemic cells decreased anti-apoptotic MCL1 protein levels by 2.9-fold, while MCL1 protein expression in predniso...

The discovery of isozymes (types I and II) of IMP dehydrogenase (IMPDH; EC 1.1.1.205), the rate-limiting enzyme of de novo GTP biosynthesis, has attracted attention as a possible novel approach to cancer diagnosis and selective tumor cell chemotherapy. To elucidate differences in expression and regulation of the two IMPDH isozymes, we examined the steady-state levels of these mRNAs in various t...

The reticuloendothelial stimulant glucan, a beta-1,3-polyglucose component of the cell wall of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, was evaluated for its ability to modify Staphylococcus aureus-induced lethality in normal and leukemic mice. In normal mice the intravenous injection of glucan (0.45 mg per mouse) 7 and 4 days prior to intravenous challenge with S. aureus (1.0 x 10(9)) resulted in a significa...