Access
This article is part of Nature's premium content.
Published online 27 November 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.1261
News
Genetics of cancer relapse revealed
Biologists have tracked the origins and evolution of a type of childhood leukaemia that is deadliest when it recurs.
Researchers have found that cancer cells that cause a type of childhood leukaemia to recur are often already present in patients when they are first diagnosed with the disease — a discovery that could help doctors to treat the cancer more efficiently.
Current treatments of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) cure more than 80% of patients, but children who then have a relapse have only a 30% chance of recovering1.
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
Comments
Reader comments are usually moderated after posting. If you find something offensive or inappropriate, you can speed this process by clicking 'Report this comment' (or, if that doesn't work for you, email redesign@nature.com). For more controversial topics, we reserve the right to moderate before comments are published.
the issue of pre-existing "resistance" is often overlooked and preference is giving to the idea that 'recurrence' 'relapse' or 'resistance' arise due to changes that are induced or arise stochastically in progeny of the primary tumor. I don't believe that Luria or Delbruck would have an argument against your findings that treatment refractory or variant cancer cells exist in the primary tumor. It is becoming increasing accepted that tumor cells possess a mutator phenotype (propounded by L. Loeb) which is in effect and evolution machine. As a result variants with phenotypic consequences arise along with mutations that don't have any selective advantages.