Researchers have identified a set of genes that makes some children resistant to the drugs used against acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the most common childhood cancer.The finding could be an important step toward the goal of making the disease curable, according to the Tennessee researchers.ALL accounts for 23 percent of cancer diagnoses in children aged 15 and younger. About 80 percent of the 3,000 U.S. children diagnosed with the disease each year can be cured by combination drug therapy, but that treatment fails in the other 20 percent of cases.Now physicians at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis report they have identified 124 genes that cause resistance to the four most widely used drugs against ALL. Their finding came from detailed genetic studies of 271 patients treated at St. Jude’s and other hospitals.The study appears in the Aug. 5 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
