A gene mutation could be an early warning signal for leukemia diagnosis and it could help speed up treatment for those who already have the disease.The mutation occurs in patients who have acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a cancer of the blood occurring mostly in adults.”It is likely that if we use this information properly that we will steer people with the defect toward more intensive therapy,” said Dr. Michael Caligiuri, associate director for Clinical Cancer Research at Ohio State.The defect, which researchers discovered two years ago, is caused when a certain gene, known as the ALL1 gene found on chromosome 11 in a cell, duplicates part of itself, Caligiuri said.”Cancer is caused by something happening in your chromosomes,” said Matthew Strout, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Internal Medicine. “Usually a gene in your chromosomes becomes mutated.”Mutation causes the cell to divide uncontrollably and become a leukemia cell, Strout said.”Leukemia is essentially cancer of the blood which originates in the bone marrow,” he said.Bone marrow is made up of immature cells which have not yet developed into blood cells, and a leukemia cell looks like an immature blood cell, he said. The mutation in the gene prevents the cell from maturing into a normal blood cell.Half of patients with AML have normal chromosomes and the other half have chromosomes that have translocated, Strout said. Translocation occurs when two chromosomes exchange pieces.Caligiuri, Strout and their colleagues looked at 98 samples of leukemia from AML patients who had normal chromosomes and found that 11 percent had the defect, Caligiuri said.Clara Bloomfield, director of the Comprehensive Cancer Center, has found that translocations can be classified with prognosis, Strout said.The length of complete remission for patients with the gene defect is quite different from those without it, Caligiuri said. Patients with the defect will remain in complete remission for seven months while patients without the defect are in remission for almost two years.”We can say with a fair amount of certainty that those with the defect are not going to make it,” Strout said. They will relapse soon, and should be treated quickly with a bone marrow transplant or aggressive chemotherapy, he said.Chemotherapy is a treatment of a high dose of chemicals injected into the veins, Caligiuri said. But bone marrow transplants are the most effective form of therapy.Andrea Bedway, a facilitator of a leukemia support group at Grant/Riverside Hospital, said patients in her group are not afraid to hear about new developments in cancer research.”It is common for patients living with a disease to want to become more informed (about their disease),” Bedway said.Patients in the group want to know more because they are a step closer to finding treatment, said Bertie Ford, a facilitator for the group.