A new hope for early T-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia therapy based on STAT5+ leukemic stem cell targeting.

Leukemia stem cells (LSCs) are known to drive tumor progression, drug resistance, microenvironmental shift and relapse, which would make them a perfect therapeutic target. However, their phenotypic and functional similarity to their normal counterparts leaves limited road maps for their selective elimination. Tremblay and colleagues recently unraveled the fundamental role of overactivated pSTAT5 as a functional marker of ETP-ALL LSCs driving leukemic progression, and highlighted its potential use as a therapeutic target to prevent fatal outcomes.