SEARCH:   Advanced

Blood, 1 March 2008, Vol. 111, No. 5, pp. 2505-2515. This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Rights and Permissions Citing Articles Citing Articles via CrossRef Google Scholar Articles by Wang, Z.-Y. Articles by Chen, Z. PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Wang, Z.-Y. Articles by Chen, Z. Related Collections Free Research Articles Clinical Trials and Observations ASH 50th Anniversary Reviews Social Bookmarking                   What's this?  Previous Article  |  Table of Contents  |  Next Article  ASH 50TH ANNIVERSARY REVIEW Acute promyelocytic leukemia: from highly fatal to highly curable Zhen-Yi Wang1, and Zhu Chen1,2 1 Shanghai Institute of Hematology and State Key Laboratory of Medical Genomics, Rui Jin Hospital affiliated to the Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) School of Medicine, Shanghai; and 2 Shanghai Center for Systems Biomedicine at SJTU, Shanghai, China Acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) is a distinct subtype of acute myeloid leukemia. Morphologically, it is identified as the M3 subtype of acute myeloid leukemia by the French-American-British classification and cytogenetically is characterized by a balanced reciprocal translocation between chromosomes 15 and 17, which results in the fusion between promyelocytic leukemia (PML) gene and retinoic acid receptor (RAR). It seems that the disease is the most malignant form of acute leukemia with a severe bleeding tendency and a fatal course of only weeks. Chemotherapy (CT; daunorubicin, idarubicin and cytosine arabinoside) was the front-line treatment of APL with a complete remission (CR) rate of 75% to 80% in newly diagnosed patients. Despite all these progresses, the median duration of remission ranged from 11 to 25 months and only 35% to 45% of the patients could be cured by CT. Since the introduction of all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA) in the treatment and optimization of the ATRA-based regimens, the CR rate was raised up to 90% to 95% and 5-year disease free survival (DFS) to 74%. The use of arsenic trioxide (ATO) since early 1990s further improved the clinical outcome of refractory or relapsed as well as newly diagnosed APL. In this article, we review the history of introduction of ATRA and ATO into clinical use and the mechanistic studies in understanding this model of cancer targeted therapy. CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

	Blood Online is supported in part by Genentech BioOncology and Biogen Idec
	Copyright © 2008 by American Society of Hematology         Online ISSN: 1528-0020