{"id":236742,"date":"2026-05-07T22:21:27","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T03:21:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/leukemia-stem-cells-cause-treatments-to-fail-but-findings-open-new-avenues-to-overcome-resistance"},"modified":"2026-05-07T22:21:27","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T03:21:27","slug":"leukemia-stem-cells-cause-treatments-to-fail-but-findings-open-new-avenues-to-overcome-resistance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/leukemia-stem-cells-cause-treatments-to-fail-but-findings-open-new-avenues-to-overcome-resistance","title":{"rendered":"Leukemia stem cells cause treatments to fail, but findings open new avenues to overcome resistance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/leukemia-stem-cells-cause-treatments-to-fail-but-findings-open-new-avenues-to-overcome-resistance2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Scientists from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and the HI-STEM Stem Cell Institute have deciphered a key mechanism that contributes to treatment failure in acute myeloid leukemia (AML). They show that there are not just one, but four different subtypes of leukemia stem cells. This diversity could explain why one of the most important AML drugs does not work sufficiently in some patients or loses its effectiveness over time\u2014resulting in the return of leukemia.<\/p>\n<p>This discovery lays an important foundation for more precise and long-term successful treatment strategies that could specifically overcome resistance mechanisms. The findings are <a href=\"https:\/\/linkinghub.elsevier.com\/retrieve\/pii\/S1934590926001529\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the journal Cell Stem Cell.<\/p>\n<p>Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is an aggressive form of blood cancer that primarily affects older people and often has a poor prognosis despite improved therapies. In recent years, the <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/news\/2023-12-drug-narrow-racial-survival-disparity.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\">targeted drug<\/a> venetoclax has significantly improved treatment. In combination with other drugs, venetoclax often shows good therapeutic success in AML and will, at least in part, replace highly aggressive chemotherapy in the future. However, AML returns in nearly all patients\u2014usually because individual cancer stem cells become resistant to the drug.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and the HI-STEM Stem Cell Institute have deciphered a key mechanism that contributes to treatment failure in acute myeloid leukemia (AML). They show that there are not just one, but four different subtypes of leukemia stem cells. This diversity could explain why one of the most important [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-236742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-futurism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236742\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}