Advances in Understanding the Molecular Pathogenesis of Neoplastic Hematologic Disorders

Extract

The 45th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology was held December 6–9, 2003, at the San Diego Convention Center in California. As with past meetings, there were exciting new developments, comprehensive educational programs, and phenomenal exhibits. There was also an ever increasing ASCLS presence at the meeting, as more hematology/hemostasis educators and researchers are finding their way to this very excellent scientific meeting.

A group of us who attended the meeting would like to share with our colleagues who were unable to attend some of the new information in select areas, covered in the following two articles with a third to follow in the next issue of CLS. While a comprehensive summary of the entire meeting would be desirable, the scope of the meeting makes such an endeavor unfeasible. Consequently, we have chosen the areas of myeloproliferative disorders and myelodysplastic syndromes, acute lymphocytic leukemias, and acute myelocytic leukemias.

This is an exciting and rapidly changing time in the study of malignant and premalignant hematologic disorders. As we evolve from a morphology-based assessment of these disorders to an era in which we are beginning to understand the basic underlying mechanisms, the development of new diagnostic and prognostic tests, as well as the development of interventions specifically targeted at the molecular defects unique to individual disease processes are being realized. By understanding the molecular mechanisms of these diseases, and the genetic and epigenetic changes that underlie their evolution and progression, it may be possible in the not too distant future,…