The ability of cells to live and divide despite their exposure to a chemical that ordinarily kills cells or inhibits their growth. Refractory leukemia is the circumstance in which a proportion of malignant cells resist the damaging effects of a drug or drugs. Cells have several ways to develop drug resistance.
Doctors from the High-Risk Leukemia Clinic at Primary Children´s Medical Center are using three specially formulated phases of therapy to rapidly decrease the number of cancer cells, thereby preventing these cells from acquiring resistance to treatment (a common problem observed in relapsed cancers).