Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in adults: the case for a strategic shift in study approach

After 20 years of frantic chemotherapeutic activity, all concerned with adult ALL are now resigned to the fact that only some 20% of the overall adult cases are biologically similar to childhood ALL, and the majority of these are in the adolescent age groups. It is evident that as much effort as possible must be made to dissect out such chemocurable patients from the bulk of patients with adult ALL so that they might obtain cure with conventional chemotherapy, thus avoiding early transplantation or unnecessary intensification. In such a rare disease, unless we organize nationally, and look at population-based studies linked to phase III or phase II studies where appropriate, we are destined not to develop appropriate strategies for treatment of this disease for a long time to come.