Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia

Velcade for Graft Versus Host DIsease – pro

Koreth found that Velcade was beneficial in GVHD; but his was a phase II trial and other phase II trials are ongoing. He found that i the 45 patients who were treated in the study; 89% of patients were treated with a one-locus and 11% of patients were treated with a two-loci mismatch. With a median follow-up of 3 years, the 180-day cumulative incidence of grade 2 to 4 acute GVHD was 22%, and the 1-year cumulative incidence of chronic GVHD was 29%.

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Allogeneic Transplant for ALL – pro

Lay Summary: The accepted situations that warrant allogeneic transplants for ALL are discussed. Most current induction regimens for adult acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) include prednisone, vincristine, and an anthracycline. Some regimens also add other drugs, such as asparaginase or cyclophosphamide. Current multiagent induction regimens result in complete response rates that range from 60% to 90%. However some patients relapse and salvage therapy

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Gleevec for acute lymphocytic leukemia – pro

Lay Summary: There is now evidence that GLeevec is very effective in Philadelphia chromosome positive ALL. Philadelphia-positive ALL is a very difficult disease to treat successfully. In the recent past, the standard approach was to use daunorubicin/vincristine/prednisone-based induction therapy to achieve remission and then, if the patient was a reasonable candidate and a donor could be found, to perform an allogeneic transplant. Now, the use of

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Overview of treatment options for acute lymphocytic leukemia – pro

Children with acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) who undergo treatment have about an 80 percent cure rate. Newer treatments may soon boost the child cure rate to as high as 90 percent. Adults have around a 40 percent cure rate. Individuals who fall in the adolescent group can be elgitimately treated with children's protocols or as adults. Induction therapy. The purpose of the first phase of treatment is to kill most of the leukemia cells in the blood

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The role of flow cytometry in diagnosis of acute leukemia – pro

A Acute leukemia displays characteristic patterns of surface antigen expression (CD antigens), which facilitate their identification and proper classification and hence play an important role in instituting proper treatment plans. In addition to enzyme cytochemical analysis, multiparameter flow cytometric analysis has become commonplace in most laboratories for that purpose. Aside from identification of blasts, flow cytometry is especially useful

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IVIG post transplantation – pro

Intravenous gammaglobulin is often administered after bone marrow/ stem cells transplantation to prophylax for infections. Antibiotics and intravenous gamma globulin are often adminstered for at least 100 days after transplant to decrease the risk of bacterial infection immediately following transplant. Although there are no randomized studies of this strategy, it is recommended by the joint guidelines of CDC, the Infectious Disease Society of America,

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History of stem cell and bone marrow transplantation in cancer and leukemia – pro

The history of stem cell research includes work with both animal and human stem cells. Stem cells can be classified into three broad categories, based on their ability to differentiate. Totipotent stem cells are found only in early embryos. Each cell can form a complete organism (e.g., identical twins). Pluripotent stem cells exist in the undifferentiated inner cell mass of the blastocyst and can form any of the over 200 different cell types found

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ASCT for Burkitt’s – pro

Standard doxorubicin-based combination chemotherapy, such as CHOP, frequently induces remissions of short duration. In an attempt to obtain durable remissions, high-dose therapy (HDT) with autologous stem-cell support was given in a few centers for patients who were in remission upon CHOP-like induction therapy. In the last decade, several pediatric groups have obtained impressive results for BL- and B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia patients

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Umbilical cord stem cells – pro

Lay summary: Cord stem cells have been shown to be equivalent to other allogeneic cells for transplantation in leukemia but not yet for other diagnoses. Cord blood transplantation is a fairly recent but rapidly becoming established technique for transplnatation in leukemia. The first unrelated cord blood transplantations were performed in children. The first 25 unrelated cord blood transplantations were reported in 1996. Since then a number of reports

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Treating biphenotypic leukemia – pro

A minority of acute leukemias have features characteristic of both the myeloid and lymphoid lineages and for this reason are designated mixed-lineage, hybrid or biphenotypic acute leukemias (BAL). There have been difficulties in establishing whether BAL represents a distinct clinico-biological entity due to a lack of objective criteria for distinguishing BAL from acute myeloid leukemias (AML) or acute lymphoblastic leukemias (ALL) with aberrant expression

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