BLACKSBURG, Va., April 3 -- Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University issued the following news release:
This year, 22,000 Americans will be diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, an aggressive blood cancer.
Many respond well to chemotherapy and appear to achieve complete remission. But even when standard tests indicate that the cancer has cleared, not all of these patients will survive.
"At the end of treatment, there may still be just a few leukemia cells hiding among a million healthy cells," said Jesse Tettero, a Virginia Tech postdoctoral associate conducting research at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute's Cancer Research Center in Washington, D.C. "If those cells survive, the cancer can return in an aggressive way,...