The leukemias are cancers of the blood forming cells. Acute leukemia involves the most primitive of these types of cells. This class of cancer leads to an overproduction of a blood cells that have similar characteristics (clones). Clonal cells share two common features that lead to the symptoms of leukemia.
1) The cells divide without control and fail to respond to the signals that tell them to stop.
2) These cells have a longer life than normal cells and gradually accumulate in the bone marrow.
This uncontrolled production of long lived cells leads to the replacement of the normal cell…