Reversing the road to malignancy

Abstract

The aim of cancer chemotherapy is to destroy the maximum number of tumour cells with the minimum number of normal body cells in order to achieve a maximal therapeutic ratio. Nevertheless it is a therapy which is often ineffectual and quite frequently associated with severe complications. It is therefore with considerable interest that one reads that other methods of therapy, which do not involve cell killing, is surprisingly showing promise in what is one of the most lethal forms of leukaemia, namely acute pro-myelocytic leukaemia (APL), a disease which often has a 100% mortality within weeks.