What is Acute Leukemia?

A great thing to tell you all is I’m going to do a project about the cancer cytogenetics in University Malaya Medical Centre (UMMC). I will start off doing the research on leukemia first. To prepare myself for this project, I need to read as many books as I can to deepen my knowledge about leukemia. Thus, today I will write a simple introduction about acute leukemia to make sure that I really understand about that. At the same time, I wish to share with you all what I have learnt too.

What is Acute Leukemia?

Acute leukemia is a hematological malignancy that can be classified into various subtypes. The classification of the subtypes is according to the morphology and immunophenotype of leukemic blasts. There were many studies shown that most probably the acute leukemia disease is because of genetic information of the origin of leukemic stem cells. The genetic material of these leukemic stem cells determines the phenotype, aggressiveness, and prognosis of acute leukemia.

To find out more about this disease, the clinical and researchers developed a lot of molecular and cellular techniques to recognize and analyze the genetic appearances in all the patients. In addition, they tried to use the new technology and methodologies to understand the transformation mechanisms of acute leukemia.

The common chromosomal abnormalities that occur on the patients are important for characterizing the types of diseases, risk stratification and the treatment design. For instance, if there is the abnormalities occur on MLL gene, we might difficult to do the prognosis on the patients. Furthermore, the all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA) and arsenic trioxide treatment might not suitable for the patient with PML-RARα fusion which is associated with chromosomal translocation between chromosome 15 and chromosome 17.

Transcriptional Deregulation Causing Acute Leukemia

Transcription is an important process in protein synthesis. And the transcription process is regulated by various transcription factors. The researchers found out that most of the primary abnormalities in acute leukemia involve the transcription factors except the abnormalities that affecting ABL gene. From that, we can conclude that the transcriptional deregulation plays a vital role in causing acute leukemia. Thus, a lot of studies have been done on the transcriptional deregulation that involve in acute leukemia for further understanding the mechanism.

Summing up, there are too many things about acute leukemia that I need to know and share with you. It is impossible for me to put all the things in just an article. I will continuously post up some information about acute leukemia in this Cytogenetics Cancer Research blog.

(Reference: Leukemia edited by Chi Wai Eric So)