Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) represents the most frequent type of cancer in children and young adults. Despite a good general prognosis and increased survival rates over the past decades, outcomes have not improved for the approximately 25 percent of patients who relapse after initially successful treatment. More than 60 percent of patients who experience ALL bone marrow relapse will die from their disease.

Now, a team led by City of Hope’s Markus Müschen, M.D., Ph.D., founding chair of the Department of Systems Biology and the Norman and Sadie Lee Foundation Endowed Professor in Pediatrics, thinks that sugar uptake and energy supply may play a key role in the relapse of ALL.

A paper published in a recent issue of the journal Nature outlines their findings, which point to increased glucose as the driver of the energy…