Treatment by design in leukemia, a meeting report, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, December 2002

Novel approaches have been designed to treat leukemia based on our understanding of the genetic and biochemical lesions present in different malignancies. This meeting report summarizes some of the recent advances in leukemia treatment. Based on the discoveries of cellular oncogenes, chromosomal translocations, monoclonal antibodies, multidrug resistance pumps, signal transduction pathways, genomics/proteonomic approaches to clinical diagnosis and mutations in biochemical pathways, clinicians and basic scientists have been able to identify the particular genetic mutations and signal transduction pathways involved as well as design more appropriate treatments for the leukemia patient. This meeting report discusses these exciting new therapies and the results obtained from ongoing clinical trials. Furthermore, rational approaches to treat complications of tumor lysis syndrome by administration of the recombinant urate oxidase protein, also known as rasburicase, which corrects the biochemical defect present in humans, were discussed. Clearly, over the past 25 years, molecular biology and biotechnology has provided the hematologist/oncologist novel bullets in their arsenal that will allow treatment by design in leukemia.