Cancer: what’s Down syndrome got to do with it?
Trisomy 21 (having 3 copies of chromosome 21) is most well known as the cause of Down syndrome. But as you can imagine, having an entire extra copy of a chromosome has other negative consequences as well. For one, people with Down syndrome are 20 times more likely than the average person to develop a severe form of leukemia, B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL). Two recent studies have helped further our understanding of the molecular disturbances that take place in trisomy 21. Read more