How I treat How I treat acute lymphocytic leukemia in adults

The treatment of newly diagnosed acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) in adults re-mains unsatisfactory. Not withstanding the outstanding progress in curing child-hood ALL, only approximately one third of adults younger than 60 years can be cured, and the overall published survival curves have not changed significantly during the past 15 years. Recent therapeu-tic advances in allogeneic transplanta-tion through the conduct of large collabo-rative studies, better understanding of the relevance of cytogenetics, improved molecular techniques for the detection of minimal residual disease, and clinical re-search into novel biologic and targeted therapies have all combined to offer po-tentially a better hope for an improved outcome in this disease. The current ap-proach in 2007 to the management of this disease is presented by way of a discus-sion of illustrative cases. In this uncom-mon and difficult disease, well-structured intergroup studies will remain vital for future progress. (Blood. 2007;110