Background
Leukemia is the most common childhood cancer worldwide with almost 4,000 cases each year in the United States alone. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is cancer of the white blood cells and T-cell leukemia is a particularly aggressive subtype of leukemia that involves T-cells or white cells that develop in the thymus. T-cell ALL constitutes about 13-15% of all cases of childhood ALL.
