Researchers in Germany have discovered that methadone, an agent used to break addiction to opioid drugs, has surprising killing power against leukemia cells, including treatment resistant forms of the cancer.

Nearly a third of leukemia patients do not respond to chemotherapy, but this is not usually discovered until they have already endured a week-long chemotherapy treatment and waited a month to see whether it has worked. A new study shows that PET scans could tell how well a patient is responding after just one day of chemotherapy.

Angiocidin, a tumor-inhibiting novel protein discovered by Temple University researchers, may also have a role as a new therapeutic application in treating leukemia, according to a study by the researchers.

By restoring two small molecules that are often lost in chronic leukemia, researchers were able to block tumor growth in an animal model.

A unique partnership between industry and academia has led to human clinical trials of a new drug for a rare class of blood diseases called myeloproliferative disorders (MPD), which are all driven by the same genetic mutation and can evolve into leukemia.

The dramatic increase that has occurred in the cure rate for children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) will be difficult to replicate in older patients without considerable additional research, according to an article by St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital authors that appears in the March 22 issue of the Lancet.

A new study led by researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) reports on a novel mechanism that can enhance the function of a protein that is frequently impaired in patients with acute forms of leukemia.

New research suggests that certain small molecules used by cells to control the proteins they make might also help doctors identify adult acute-leukemia patients who are likely to respond poorly to therapy.

A new scoring system for a form of leukemia known as myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) identifies patients who appear to have low-risk disease but actually have poor prospects of survival, researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center report online at the journal Leukemia.

Oregon Health & Science University Cancer Institute researcher Jeff Tyner, Ph.D., has created a way to identify proteins that are candidates for targeted therapy in acute myeloid leukemia using an assay that yields results in just four days.

Relapsed chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) patients who had a complete response to combination therapy that included the drug oblimersen survived significantly longer than patients treated with chemotherapy alone, a team led by researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center reports at the 49th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology.

Patients whose immune system responded to a peptide vaccine for leukemia enjoyed a median remission that was more than three times longer than non-responders, a team led by researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center reports at the 49th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology.