By Jerome Groopman An experimental new drug can make some leukemic cells mature into healthier ones.
He prescribed high doses of chemotherapy and full-body radiation to kill any leukemic cells in Mrs. McCauley's bone marrow.
To some scientists, the leukemic cells in A.M.L. include cancer stem cells; to others, they are simply immature blood cells.
The leukemic cells had been neutralized, as they had been in the clinical study of patients like William Kuhens.
When the researchers exposed leukemic cells to ATRA, they appeared to mature, released from their primitive state.
The drug, called all-trans-retinoic acid, or ATRA, causes leukemic cells to abandon their relentless growth and to mature into white blood cells.
In the nineteen-seventies, researchers discovered that leukemic cells lay sleeping in the central nervous system, and developed targeted treatments that could eliminate them.
The resulting treatment was a one-two punch: ATRA triggered the leukemic cells to mature, whereupon they became vulnerable to the second drug, which destroyed them.
The images at Agios showed robust marrow: the leukemic cells had been forced to mature and had reverted to functioning white blood cells, red blood cells, and platelets.
The leukemic cells, reprogrammed to mature and behave, exhibited a strong tendency to become cancerous again within three to six months.
GA and FM estimated the viability of leukemic cells.
