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Understanding Blood Counts

Blood cell counts give your doctor important clues about the state of your health before, during and after treatment. Blood counts alone can't determine whether you have a blood cancer, but they can alert your doctor if further testing is needed.

A complete blood count (CBC) is the number and types of cells circulating in your blood. Your CBC is measured using laboratory tests that require a small blood sample.

Blood is composed of several types of cells:

Low Blood Counts

Cancer therapy can lower your blood cell counts and chemotherapy especially can affect rapidly dividing bone marrow cells. This hinders the marrow's ability to supply new cells to the blood during treatment and for some time after. Patients receiving treatment for blood cancer can develop

Coping With Cancer

When someone is diagnosed with cancer, everyone in his or her family is affected. This holds especially true when a child has cancer. Different families have different ways of coping, but there are some sound strategies that anyone can employ. For useful tools and tips that may help, see the following pages:

When Your Child Has Cancer

Hearing that your child has cancer is terrifying for any parent. Today, most childhood cancer patients can expect to have full and productive lives. Many childhood cancer survivors return to school, attend college, enter the workforce, marry and become parents. Nevertheless, being vigilant about follow-up care, being aware of long-term and late effects of treatment, helping your child return to school and even dealing with your emotions are all things you’ll need to manage.  

When the Insurance Says No to a Clinical Trial

As an LLS Clinical Trial Nurse Navigator, Ashley Giacobbi works tirelessly to connect the right patient with the right clinical trial – work that has become increasingly complicated in the COVID-19 era.

But recently, she went the extra mile to ensure a patient – a young healthcare worker whose AML had relapsed several times – could access a trial that offered a promising treatment option.

Cancer-Related Fatigue

Fatigue is very common in patients with blood cancers. Cancer-related fatigue (CRF) is characterized by excessive and persistent exhaustion that interferes with daily activity. CRF often begins before cancer is diagnosed, worsens during the course of treatment and may persist for months—even years—after treatment ends. 

Firefighters and Cancer Risk

Firefighters are at an increased risk of developing cancer. There are steps to take that can reduce that risk.

All firefighters, regardless whether they are career or volunteer, put their own lives at risk to save others in their communities. In addition to the danger of putting out fires, firefighters are at an increased risk for different types of cancer due to the smoke and hazardous chemicals they are exposed to in the line of duty. There have been multiple studies that show this increased risk for cancer. 

211Astatine-CD123 Radioimmunotherapy for Cancer (Stem) Cell-Directed Treatment of Acute Leukemia

Because acute leukemias are very sensitive to radiation, radioisotopes are ideal payloads to arm antibodies against these difficult-to-cure, aggressive blood cancers. Here, we will develop fully human anti-CD123 antibodies carrying the highly potent alpha-emitter astatine-211 (211At) as a new therapy for acute leukemia.

FDA Approves New Treatment for Rare Blood Disorder

Long-Term and Late Effects For Cancer Survivors

Blood cancer survivors don't always have serious long-term or late effects of treatment. For those who do, some long-term effects, such as fatigue, can linger for months or years after therapy. Late effects, such as medical conditions like heart disease and other cancers, don't appear until years after treatment ends. Effects can range from mild to severe.

Talk with your doctor about possible long-term and late effects. Your risk for developing long-term or late effects can be influenced by your:

Follow-Up Care For Childhood Cancer Survivors

Survivorship Workbook

Use this Survivorship Workbook to collect all the important information you need throughout diagnosis, treatment, follow-up care and long-term management of a blood cancer.

Targeting aberrant epigenetic condensates in myeloid malignancies

Genetic changes of ASXL1 are very frequent in human blood cancers. We found that the altered forms of ASXL1 protein promote blood cancers through forming tiny liquid-like droplets in the cell. In this project, we aim to develop a method to specifically break these droplets to inhibit its activity in driving blood cancers.

Crucial LLS Support Drives Approval of New Precision Medicine for Rare Group of Blood Diseases

Long-Term And Late Effects Of Treatment For Childhood Cancer Survivors

Treatment for childhood blood cancer may consist of chemotherapy and other drug therapies and may also include radiation therapy or allogeneic stem cell transplantation. There are risks for long-term and late effects common to all of these treatments, and these may include problems with learning, fatigue, bone or joint pain and an increased risk for developing a secondary cancer. 

Uncovering the role of TCL1A as a driver of clonal hematopoiesis and hematological malignancies

Mutations in a diverse set of genes can lead to pre-cancerous expansion of blood stem cells, but the factors that mediate the growth of these mutant clones are unknown. We recently discovered that many of these mutations lead to abnormal activation of a gene called TCL1A. Consequently, TCL1A may be an attractive target for treating or preventing blood cancers, but little is known about its function. Here, we will uncover how TCL1A influences the biology of pre-cancerous blood stem cells.

Health Insurance and End-of-Life Care for People with Hematologic Malignancies

Patients with blood cancers from racial and ethnic minority groups are more likely to experience suboptimal end-of-life (EOL) care. These disparities may be partially driven by health insurance differences but there is limited research examining insurance access as a potential contributor to EOL care disparities for this population. We will leverage complementary local and national datasets to assess the relationship between insurance status and type with EOL quality measures.

Unfolding selective pathway dependencies of CALR mutated myeloproliferative neoplasms

The goal of this study is to selectively eradicate blood cancer cells carrying mutations in a gene called calreticulin. Genes and corresponding proteins required for cancer cell survival but not for the survival of healthy cells will first be targeted in mice, both genetically and by using drugs. Validated drugs will then be tested on patient samples. This study will lay the foundation to the development of tailored treatments for patients with calreticulin-mutated blood cancer.

Advancing the therapeutic landscape for Chronic Myelomonocytic Leukemia (CMML)

CMML is a universally lethal blood cancer characterized by increased monocytes (a type of white blood cell) in the peripheral blood and abnormal appearing cells within the bone marrow. Most CMML patients are clinically asymptomatic and remain so for weeks to months following diagnosis, with disease progression remaining inevitable. Despite therapeutic advances in similar blood cancers, no specific molecularly targeted therapies currently exist to treat CMML.

Declaración sobre los estudios recientes de las vacunas contra la COVID-19 de tipo ARNm para pacientes con cáncer de la sangre

Genomic interrogation of high-risk myeloid neoplasms to identify new therapies

The long-term goal of my research program is to improve the outcomes for patients with high-risk myeloid blood cancers, particularly those with loss of chromosome 7 or CUX1. We are tackling this question using an arsenal of innovative methods and tools, including mouse models, human cells and patient samples, and state-of-the-art technologies to examine the cancer cell genome. Accomplishing this work will reveal new treatments and strategies for preventing blood cancers from arising.

Predicting progression in myeloproliferative neoplasm patients by reconstructing the history of disease in each patient

Blood cancers called myeloproliferative neoplasms occur when one of the blood stem cells picks up a mutation. Some patients stay in the chronic phase of the disease for years whereas others rapidly progress with poor outcome. We recently measured when the cancer mutation first occurs and the rate of expansion of the cancer cells in individual patients. We will develop a method that uses the history of disease in each patient to identify those that are at risk of progression.

CHEK2 as a predisposition gene for clonal hematopoiesis and hematopoietic malignancies

This proposal explores how inherited mutations in the DNA repair gene CHEK2 lead to blood cancers. Our work employs two unique resources: patient-derived cell lines and mice engineered with an inherited Chek2 variant that accurately models how bone marrow stem cells acquire DNA changes over time leading to bone marrow cancers. Our results may lead to new approaches that slow or prevent blood cancers in people with high risk.

Development of mutant GTPase-specific degraders for peripheral T cell lymphoma treatment

This project aims to develop targeted therapies against peripheral T cell lymphoma (PTCL), a diverse group of aggressive blood cancers with poor clinical outcomes. This project is tightly relevant to cancer control and treatment, promising to advance our understanding on how blood cancers initiate and progress, and lead to new therapeutics for the treatment of peripheral T cell lymphoma (PTCL). We will develop targeted therapeutics to engage an oncogenic RHOA GTPase mutant to treat PTCL and other types of tumors with similar genetic backgrounds.

Fertility and Pregnancy

In addition to our programs and services for blood cancer patients, families and caregivers, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) is pleased to offer an extensive directory of national and international resources. These organizations can help with cancer-related issues like financial assistance, support and counseling, assistance with transportation, and summer camps.