A team of scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) has laid bare the mechanism behind a phenomenon called oncogene addiction in mice suffering from a form of leukemia that mimics acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) in humans. Significantly, the team was able to mobilize their newly gained understanding to target “addiction” pathways in the model mice, resulting in rapid and complete eradication of the cancer, which is usually fatal and resistant to conventional chemotherapy. Oncogene addiction refers to the curious phenomenon that cancer cells, despite harboring many genetic alterations, can remain dependent on the continuing expression of a single aberrant, cancer-promoting gene -- an oncogene.
