The Hematologic Malignancy Program is closely associated with the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center, consistently rated among the nation’s top cancer programs by U.S.News & World Report.

Patients benefit directly from Duke’s leadership in cancer research, allowing us to offer tomorrow’s innovations today in the field of cell signaling, stem cell therapies, cellular targeting, tumor immunology, and drug development. Recent advances in our program include:

• Duke researchers were part of national studies determining that chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) patients taking imatinib (Gleevec™) as a first-line therapy can expect to live an average of six years longer than those who take more traditional interferon-alpha therapy. This study shows that sophisticated drug design, like imatinib, could contribute to more effective cancer drugs.
• Duke’s diagnostic imaging capabilities give patients access to the full spectrum of technology, from traditional x-ray, computed tomography (CT) scans, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRIs) to state-of-the-art protocols combining positron emission tomography (PET) and CT scans to provide more sophisticated diagnostic information.
• Duke pathology experts can go beyond standard diagnostics to monitor leukemia and lymphoma patients at the molecular level using fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) techniques.
• Duke immunologists have pinpointed how a widely used treatment for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma attacks abnormal immune cells, called B cells. They found that anti-CD20 (a receptor protein) antibodies triggered the killing of B cells only by activating immune cells called monocytes to attack the B cells. Currently, a clinical trial is allowing researchers to explore genetic differences among B-cell lymphomas that will affect their sensitivity to anti-CD20 antibodies. Understanding such genetic differences will lead to greatly improved therapies for both lymphomas and autoimmune diseases.