Leukemia has been a really common caner among children everywhere and there’s no actual cause of the cancerous disease. Trying to cure it is hard enough without even a cause but the treatments some have to go through are painful and don’t work. Treatments include
• Radiation Therapy
(radiation works by making small breaks in the DNA inside cells. These breaks keep cancer cells from growing and dividing and cause them to die)
• Chemotherapy
(chemotherapy is a drug treatment that uses powerful chemicals to kill fast-growing cells in your body)
• Targeted Therapy
(targeted therapy works by targeting the cancers specific genes, proteins, or the tissue environment that contributes the cancer growth and survival)
• Stem Cell Transplantation
(Before the transplant is even started, The patient receives high doses of chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy to destroy the diseased cells. Then the stem cells are returned to the patient, where they can produce new blood and immune cells and replace the cells destroys by the treatment. The stem cell preparation is infused into a vein and once the bloodstream, the stem cells migrate to the bone marrow space. )
Advances
- Scientists are making great progress in understanding how changes in the DNA (genes) inside normal bone marrow cells can cause them to develop into leukemia cells. A greater understanding of the gene changes that often occur in ALL cells is providing insight into why these cells become abnormal. As researchers have found more of these changes, it is becoming clear that there are many types of ALL. Each of these might have different gene changes that affect how the leukemia will progress and which treatments might be most helpful. Doctors are now learning how to use these changes to help determine a person’s outlook and whether they should receive more or less intensive treatment.
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