Preventing Fatal Infections in Children with Down Syndrome During Treatment for Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia

Children with Down Syndrome (DS) have a 20-fold increased risk of developing acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) with significantly lower overall survival in comparison to children without DS who have ALL. This is due in part to the 3- to 10-fold higher risk of infection-related mortality during chemotherapy for ALL. Proposed studies in this application will investigate potential biomarkers for risk of fatal infection in DS patients with ALL to stratify these patients into high and low risk cohorts to guide treatment regimens.