A real boon for medical practitioners from a number of disciplines, this is a practice-oriented manual of medical oncology and hematology for day-to-day use in caring for patients hematologic and neoplastic diseases. It is founded on the longstanding experience of a large specialized university department accustomed to having to provide reliable advice in a broad range of circumstances. The authors have chosen not to give a comprehensive review of the various subjects but have instead focused on practical methods which have proven to be useful in their experience, with special emphasis on standardizing chemotherapy protocols.

This book provides an unprecedented overview of "Targeted Therapies" for acute myeloid leukemias. It aims at an almost comprehensive coverage of the diverse therapeutic strategies that have been developed during the last decade and are now being evaluated in early clinical trials. Paired and authoritative chapters by leading research scientists and clinicians explain basic concepts and clinical translation of topics that include the underlying genetic and proteomic abnormalities of AML, the development of novel nucleoside analogues, the roles of microRNAs, apoptosis regulators Bcl-2 and p53 and of critical cell signaling proteins such as PIM, FLT3, Raf/MEK, PI3K/AKT/mTOR and aurora kinases. Chapters on epigenetic mechanisms, nuclear receptors, cell surface antigens, the hypoxic leukemia microenvironment, stem cells and leukemia metabolism provide insights into leukemia cell vulnerabilities. Cell therapies utilizing T-, NK- and mesenchymal stem cells and progress in hematopoietic transplantation strategies round up this overview of the multi-dimensional therapeutic landscape in which leukemia specialists develop treatment strategies that are expected to make "leukemia history" in the near future.

Chromosome abnormalities of cancer cells have been recognized for a long time, and have generally proven to be a highly specific marker ofmalignancy. The contri- butions collected in this book, "Tumor Aneuploidy", cover several major aspects of present knowledge conceming the occurrence and clinical significance of chromo- some abnormalities as delineated by karyotype analyses or measurements of the cellular DNA content. Certain non-random clonal chromosome losses, deletions and translocations ap- pear to represent primary genetic lesions of malignancies and reflect their clonal origin. Secondary intraneoplastic genetic evolution is suggested by major clonal ab- normalities of chromosome number and cellular DNA content. Both types of ge- netic changes have been reaching great relevance in cancer medicine, today. Although the Philadelphia chromosome was first discovered in chronic myelo- cytic leukemia (CML), by Nowell and Hungerford in 1960, new banding techniques developed in the 1970's were needed to identity this abnormality as a translocation between chromosomes 9 and 22 (t(9; 22)). Soon thereafter, further non-random translocations were detected and attributed to special diseases like t(8; 21) and t(15; 17) to acute myeloid leukemias (AML) and t(9; 22), t(4; 11), t(8; 14) to acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).

A real boon for medical practitioners from a number of disciplines, this is a practice-oriented manual of medical oncology and hematology for day-to-day use in caring for patients' hematologic and neoplastic diseases. It is founded on the longstanding experience of a large specialized university department accustomed to having to provide reliable advice in a broad range of circumstances. The authors have chosen not to give a comprehensive review of the various subjects but have instead focused on practical methods which have proven to be useful in their experience, with special emphasis on standardizing chemotherapy protocols.