Genetics, Biology, and Treatment of Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Dear Colleagues,

Decades of research have led to the accumulation of substantial knowledge about the etiology, genetics, and molecular and cellular biology of acute myeloid leukemia (AML). AML is known as the epitome of a stem cell driven malignancy, and disease relevant interactions between leukemic stem cells and their specific niche in the bone marrow have been extensively characterized. A number of recurrent molecular and genetic aberrations have been detected and established as drivers and important prognosticators of AML, and several useful mouse models of this disease have been generated and described in great detail.

Despite of these advances, outcome for patients with AML has remained poor, with a majority of them either suffering from primary resistance, or relapsing with refractory disease after initially achieving a remission in response to therapy. For decades, no new drugs for the treatment of AML had permanently reached the market, a spell that appears to have been broken in 2017, in which both new formulations of well-established chemotherapeutic drugs and novel, rationally designed agents were approved for the therapy of AML. In addition, the past few years have seen further important milestones in our basic understanding of AML. Most importantly, advances in sequencing technologies have facilitated quantum leaps in our already substantial knowledge of the genetic etiology of AML. Recent studies have focused increasingly not only on elucidating the pathogenesis, but also the evolution of AML from diagnosis to relapse, of which the latter can be viewed as the embodiment of therapy resistant disease. These developments raise hopes that the pace of discovery of clinically useful novel therapeutics will increase, and improve the outcomes of patients with AML to the impressive extent that has already been seen for one of its subtypes, acute promyelocytic leukemia.

This Special Issue welcomes both original papers and review articles addressing one or several of the
above issues, or of the topics mentioned in the key words listed below.

Prof. Rotraud Wieser
Guest Editor

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