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The research team led by Dr. Pier Paolo Pandolfi , a Harvard Medical School professor and head of the Cancer Genetics Program in Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, found that arsenic-based therapies successfully target leukemia initiating cells, or LICs, that are impervious to conventional chemotherapy.

The findings, published online in the journal Nature, suggest the tumor suppressor protein PML can be degraded with an arsenic-based agent used in traditional Chinese medicine. The hospital said the therapy has proven safe and non-toxic in clinical trials.

"Ninety percent of existing cancer treatments are antiproliferative agents -- they target the pool of proliferative cells, leaving behind the dormant LICs", Panolfi said in a statement. "But in determining that PML serves to guard the LICs that have been left behind, we also discovered that if we knock out PML (through pharmacologic means), the LICs will lose their braking abilities and run out of gas, thereby committing the fatal error of proliferation -- and exposing themselves to the deadly effects of cancer therapies."

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