Trying to know how leukemia occurs
As with other cancers, researchers did not know how leukemia occurs. Now, the two girls have helped figure out how the most frequent leukemia occurs in childhood (acute lymphoblastic leukemia). The girls are twins and one has leukemia and the other does not.
This type of leukemia is due to a set of mutations. In a quarter of patients, the mutation that initiates cancer is the fusion of the TEL and AML1 genes. This mutation has also been detected in neonatal blood, so researchers believed it occurs in the uterus. But they didn't know what happens next until the leukemia appears, or if there are stem cells that produce it.
This is what they have studied at the University of Oxford. Mice with leukemia had their cells taken and injected into mice with immunodeficiency. The mice became ill and took their cells and injected them into another, and also had leukemia. Researchers noted that these cells can be considered stem cells of leukemia.
The researchers have not stayed there, and the twins Olivia and Isabella Murphy have studied. Olivia has this type of leukemia and its cells have the mutation mentioned. But even though both grew up in the same placenta, Isabella has no leukemia. In his blood, however, there are stem cells with mutations. The researchers conclude, on the one hand, that Isabella collected the leukemia stem cells when they were in the uterus, but, on the other, that the stem cells were insufficient for the development of the disease.
Researchers have continued to investigate with leukemia stem cells, which is supposed to cause cancer to reappear after treatments. The more you know, the more effective the treatments you expect to develop.
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