Bringing Leukemia Stem Cells into the Clinic

Outcomes in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) remain poor due to high rates of relapse. Thus, there is an urgent unmet medical need for new therapies that can more effectively kill the leukemia stem cells (LSC) and recently recognized preleukemic hematopoietic stem cells (preL-HSC) that can drive relapsed disease. In order to develop such therapies, a better understanding of the biology of these stem cell populations is required. The best functional assays for stem cells are xenotransplantation models using immunodeficient mouse recipients. Here, we present evidence of the clinical validity of such models for studying the biology of AML stem cells and propose a new paradigm for the development of LSC-targeted agents and biomarker tools for patient selection.