Loading...
Children with T-cell lineage acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL; 10%–15% of all pediatric ALL cases) were once considered to be at high risk for mortality. However, their prognosis is now comparable to that of pediatric patients with B-cell lineage ALL, provided that they receive intensive chemotherapy (N Engl J Med 2006; 354:166). Even so, some children with T-ALL do not respond to therapy. Researchers postulated that such treatment resistance might be associated with an early T-cell precursor (ETP; a newly identified thymocyte subtype that retains the potential for multilineage differentiation), given the higher rate of minimal residual disease demonstrated in ETP-ALL patients.
To test this hypothesis, the investigators studied leukemic c…