Towards personalised medicine in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukaemia

Halsey, C. (2014) Towards personalised medicine in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. In: Thomas, A.E. and Halsey, C. (eds.) Controversies in Pediatric and Adolescent Hematology. Kerger, pp. 98-115. ISBN 9783318024234 (doi: 10.1159/000350349)

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Publisher's URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1159/000350349

Abstract

Childhood leukaemia is one of the success stories of modern medicine. Initially advances were made by using progressively more intensive multi-agent chemotherapy regimens for all children. More recently, it has been appreciated that individual children differ considerably with respect to the sensitivity of their leukaemic cells to chemotherapy and also their susceptibility to treatment-related toxicity. This has led to a move towards more personalised treatment. The mainstay of this approach is the use of minimal residual disease measurement which assesses each patient's response to initial therapy and enables treatment modifications to be made in real time. Personalised approaches also extend to identifying children at risk of drug toxicity using pharmacogenomics and the use of molecular techniques to identify mutations in leukaemic cells that can be specifically targeted by new drugs. This article reviews the techniques and strategies in current use and speculates on how advances in interpreting the explosion of genetic information becoming available may improve treatment for children with leukaemia in the future.

Item Type:Book Sections
Status:Published
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:Halsey, Professor Chris
Authors: Halsey, C.
College/School:College of Medical Veterinary and Life Sciences > School of Infection & Immunity
Publisher:Kerger
ISSN:1017-5989
ISBN:9783318024234

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