Chronic myelogenous leukemia: mechanisms underlying disease progression

Chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML), characterized by the BCR-ABL gene rearrangement, has been extensively studied. Significant progress has been made in the area of BCR-ABL-mediated intracellular signaling, which has led to a better understanding of BCR-ABL-mediated clinical features in chronic phase CML. Disease progression and blast crisis CML is associated with characteristic non-random cytogenetic and molecular events. These can be viewed as increased oncogenic activity or loss of tumor suppressor activity. However, what causes transformation and disease progression to blast crisis is only poorly understood. This is in part due to the lack of a good in vivo model of chronic phase CML even though animal models developed over the last few years have started to provide insights into blast crisis development. Thus, additional in vitro and in vivo studies will be needed to provide a complete understanding of the contribution of BCR-ABL and other genes to disease progression and to improve therapeutic approaches for blast crisis CML.