Leukemia/Lymphoma/Hematologic Malignancies

The term “blood cancer” usually is referring to cancers that start in the cells that make up our blood – especially our immune system. The lymphomas – both Hodgkin and the non-Hodgkin lymphomas, the myeloid leukemias – including both acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) – and multiple myeloma are three main categories. But other cancers, including myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) and myeloproliferative neoplasia (MPN) are also types of blood cancer.

Each type of cancer has its own staging system, or system to describe where it is in the body or how risky an individual’s illness may be. Unlike cancers that start in a specific organ in the body, like breast cancer or prostate cancer, where in the body a patient’s blood cancer is found will often be only one minor part of a holistic assessment of a patient’s disease. 

Equally or more important is how much cancer is found, how quickly it is growing, what its precise biology tells us, how it is affecting the body, and how it is making you feel.

While having a family history of cancer can increase risk of developing certain blood cancers, and while certain genetic factors may be hereditary, the majority of patients who are diagnosed with blood cancers will not have a hereditary cause, and children or family members will not need to be screened or tested for blood cancer. We always encourage an open discussion around hereditary risks with your care team to get personalized recommendations.

We have a number of tools available in the treatment of patients diagnosed with a blood cancer. There are literally over a hundred different types of blood cancer, and treatments are tailored to each illness, and each patient facing that illness. We have traditional chemotherapy medicines that attack rapidly dividing cells, immunotherapies that can enable our immune systems to attack our cancers, and targeted therapies that can block signals within cancer cells that they rely upon to survive. We have radiation therapy that can kill cancer cells specifically where the beam is directed. And we have stem cell transplantation, which can either potentiate high-dose therapy to overwhelm cancer’s ability to resist treatment or even replace a patient’s immune system with a new one that can attack blood cancer cells.