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Letai is the lead author and Korsmeyer, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, is the senior author of a report published in the Sept. 21 issue of Cancer Cell. The other authors are Mia D. Sorcinelli and Caroline Beard. The report describes an experiment with laboratory mice genetically modified to be highly prone to developing leukemia. The mice were also modified so that the BCL-2 protein could be turned off by adding an antibiotic to the animals' water.

The scientists observed 28 mice, which, at 5 to 7 weeks of age, had developed leukemia. Fourteen were given the antibiotic in their water to turn off the BCL-2 genes. Within three days, the treated animals had a decline in leukemia cells and their white blood cell counts became normal within 10 days.

There was no such improvement in the untreated mice, whose cancers resisted death because of their active BCL-2 genes: they all died by just over 100 days of age. By contrast, five of the mice with silenced BCL-2 genes survived for over 200 days, and one of them lived more than a year.

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Mice, being mammals, do share substantial genetic and physiological similarities to humans, and so this research is quite germane to determining how to combat leukemia in humans.