A brief history of treatments for chilhood acute lymphoblastic leukaemia

Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia is the most frquent childhood malignancy The first effective drugs, which provided only short-lived complete remission, started to be used in the 1950s All the effective drugs currently in use were discovered in the 1960s, when the first multidrug chemotherapy regumens were shown to confer prolonged complete remission, raising the possibility of a cure Simultaneously, progress in our knowledge of leukaemic cells, and the identification of prognostic factors such as leukocytosis, age, cytogenetic and molecular abnormalities, and the early therapeutic response of leukaemic cells, led to randomized multicenter national and international trials As a result, the chance of cure increased gradually over the last three decades In rich countries, the overall survival rate among children with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia now reaches 85 to 90%