Cure of leukemia

This century has seen remarkable progress towards the understanding and treatment of leukemia. The development of combination therapies of cytotoxic drugs with or without stem-cell transplantation has increased the cure rate of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) to greater than 70% in many centers. However, major problems remain, with cure rates for adults with ALL and for other types of leukemia remaining much lower. Moveover, the complexity and expense of current therapies makes them unavailable to most individuals worldwide, while their toxicity makes them universally undesirable. Our challenge for the next century is to build on our increasing understanding of the molecular basis of leukemia to devise safe, cheap, and effective approaches to prevent or treat this group of diseases.