Pediatric Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia Treatment

Chemotherapy treatment for ALL is divided into the 3 phases mentioned above. During intensive phases, patients usually need to be hospitalized. With ALL, a combination of different chemotherapy drugs is given during the course of treatment.

Targeted therapy drugs work differently from chemotherapy drugs because they are made to identify and attack specific cancer cells while leaving healthy cells alone. In some cases, they are more effective than chemotherapy drugs and they often have different side effects.

One out of every four adults with ALL has leukemia cells with the Philadelphia chromosome — an abnormal chromosome formed by the swapping of genetic material between chromosomes 9 and 22. Targeted drugs have been developed to attack this specific type of ALL.

Radiation therapy uses high doses of radiation to kill cancer cells. It is not usually used in the treatment of ALL, but may be used if leukemia has spread, or before a bone marrow transplant.

A bone marrow transplant, or a stem cell transplant, is a procedure that involves replacing damaged bone marrow with healthy bone marrow stem cells.

Since very high doses of chemotherapy can severely damage bone marrow, a stem cell transplant allows doctors to use higher doses to kill leukemia cells and then restore the bone marrow through a transplant.

The stem cells may come from the patient (stem cells are removed and frozen before a person gets treatment), from a donor, or from umbilical cord blood. After the transplant, the new cells multiply and create healthy bone marrow.

CAR T-cell therapy, or chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy, is a new type of cancer treatment in which the patient’s T-cells are taken and engineered in a laboratory to seek out and kill cancer cells.

T cells are removed from the patient’s blood in a laboratory and given special receptors that bind to cancer cells. The engineered T cells then grow and are infused into the patient to seek out and bind with leukemia cells.

This promising cancer treatment is just one of the many new and innovative treatments offered at Sheba Medical Center.