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What: For patients with T cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL), a rare form of blood cancer that mainly affects children and young adults, drug resistance poses a major threat to a promising treatment option currently in clinical trials. About half of patients with T-ALL have mutations in NOTCH1, but drugs that target this gene have so far produced only short-lived effects: at first, the cancer seems to respond, but in a short period of time, T-ALL returns.

An international team led by researchers at the Ó³»­´«Ã½ and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has identified mutations in a gene that can reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, even in people who have risk factors such as obesity and old age. The results focus the search for developing novel therapeutic strategies for type 2 diabetes; if a drug can be developed that mimics the protective effect of these mutations, it could open up new ways of preventing this devastating disease.