Yogen Saunthararajah, MD

Acute promyelocytic leukemia, a rare genetic subtype of de novo acute myeloid leukemia is treated not with conventional cytotoxic chemotherapy but with just 2 drugs: all-trans retinoic acid and arsenic trioxide. Given this, an enduring question has been whether noncytotoxic differentiation-restoring therapy can be extended to the most common genetic subtypes of AML.

One of the central reasons that curing cancer has been so problematic is the dysfunction of TP53, the single most common genetic alteration in cancer.