Good morning. I would like to get started. My name is Bill Carroll. On behalf of myself and Dr. Kantarjian, I want to welcome you to the State of the Science meeting.

The purpose of this meeting is to identify the most important, promising translational science. At the same time we must begin to think about how we can integrate this science into our therapeutic protocols, to perhaps provide us with a more predictive identification scheme, to identify mechanisms of drug resistance and most importantly to implement new therapies.

Certainly, the first session is focused on that type of translational science. So, we will go through apoptosis, gene profiling, and the development of effective preclinical models in fish and mice.

At the end of this first session, we hope to prioritize certain scientific issues that are fertile areas for disease prediction in risk stratification and models that might allow us to pick the most promising approaches to therapy .
The second session is going to focus on more direct therapeutic directions. What are the emerging therapeutic questions that we should focus on in the next series of clinical trials?

This afternoon, we have a series of working groups. What I would like to do, in order to make sure that the working groups are evenly proportioned, is to pass around sign in sheet, so we can begin to see who is going to what session. We may move people in order to provide a stimulating discussion for each of the groups.

I would like to remind the speakers, in order for us to stay on time and get through everything, that we need to limit ourselves to 12 to 15 minutes, and I am going to hold your feet to the fire with that time limit.

So, without further ado, I want to introduce Cheryl Willman, who is going to talk about gene profiling in acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

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