成人T 細胞白血病の治療

Since Takatsuki’s group noticed a new disease, adult T-cell leukemia (ATL), caused by retroviral infection, many researchers tried to figure out how to prevent the transmission and how to treat the neoplasm of mature T lymphocyte for 35 years. Blood borne infection was controlled and stopped after the screening of HTLV‐1 antibody started in 1986. However, once HTLV‐1 carriers develop to aggressive type of ATL including acute type and lymphoma-type, the median survival time is about one year and the patients relapse and die even during chemotherapy. It has been hard time for patients and families more than 25 years. Then, over the last 10 years, nation-wide studies resulted in the progression of treatment strategy for improvement of ATL patients’ survival. One is allogeneic stem cell transplantation undergone in patients available for and the other is a novel monoclonal antibody against chemokine receptor CCR4 on the surface of ATL cells. The new era of ATL treatment has come. Furthermore, novel predictive marker of ATL development and biomarker of ATL treatment are investigated to release patients from this incurable disease.