The need for new agents -- Identifying pre-clinical agents -- Pre-clinical evaluation -- Design of early phase trials -- Strategies for trial design and analyses -- Overview on Molecular and Animal models of ALL -- Apoptosis, BCL2 -- Targeting Stem Cells -- Nucleoside Analogues -- Flt3 Inhibitors -- Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors -- Monoclonal Antibodies -- Proteasome inhibitors -- Targeting epigenetic pathways in ALL.- Incorporating new therapies in frontline protocols.-.

New Agents for the Treatment of Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL), examines the strategies for the use of new agents as well as possible targets of therapy in this disease. Though associated with high cure rates, relapsed disease has a poor outcome. Moreover, therapy is unduly prolonged and toxic. For over 4 decades, no new drugs have been available and now we have a surfeit. The challenge is to design trials to evaluate the potential efficacy of non-targeted therapy in a disease with good outcome. An increasing number of pathways, amenable to targeted therapy are also being identified. The heterogeneity of ALL suggests that targeted therapy at the moment will need to be tailored to the patient. How then can such drugs be evaluated within conventional clinical trials? These are the crossroads we have reached in acute lymphoblastic leukaemia and this book discusses and proposes some solutions to these issues.