Acute Nonlymphocytic Leukemia in Adults: Pathophysiology, Status of Current Therapy, and New Approaches

Recent information concerning the cell biology of leukemias has provided new insights into the pathophysiology and pathogenesis of acute leukemia, involving the detection of leukemia viruses, oncogenes and their products, and the discovery of factors supporting clonal leukemic growth. Murine, avian, and cat leukemia viruses are well characterized. To date, only HTLV I appears to be a likely candidate as a human leukemia virus. For both avian and murine viruses, there is a fundamental classification distinction between long-latency viruses (LLV) and acute transforming viruses (ATV). The ATV are replication defective and must be propagated with a helper virus. They have within their genome an…