Childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia: from genome to patient

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia is the most common malignant disease in childhood. During recent decades prognosis for children with acute leukemia has greatly improved, including the patients treated in the Slovak Republic. The prognosis for these patients has improved as a result of the systematic and well-organized international research efforts and clinical trials. The advent of new genomic technologies has provided new insights into leukemogenesis, identified many novel subtypes of leukemia, and triggered development of new therapeutic formulations. The success of treatment depends on stratifying patients into risk group and incorporating novel treatment strategies.The Slovak pediatric leukemia group is actively incorporated into these international clinical trials and the outcome for our patients is comparable to the results published in Western Europe. (author)