Written in blood

摘要

In 1959, David Hungerford of the Fox Chase Cancer Center and Peter Nowell from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine discovered that blood cells taken from two people with chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML) had a striking abnormality when viewed under the microscope: chromosome 22 in these cells had a big chunk missing. That was the first glimpse of a genetic link to leukaemia - and, in fact, the first genetic abnormality associated with any form of cancer. The stubby Philadelphia chromosome, named for the city of its discovery, is now known to be present in 95% of all people with CML.