In new research from Baylor College of Medicine published in Cell, scientists reveal that different genetic drivers of leukemia use the same secret compartments inside the cell nucleus to keep cancer growing. The finding points to a shared physical target that could inspire new kinds of treatments.

The work reshapes a long-standing view of how a common leukemia begins and offers a fresh way to design therapies that strike a single weakness shared across distinct genetic forms of the disease.

Leukemia starts when mutations in blood-forming cells disrupt the balance between growth and differentiation. Patients with entirely different genetic changes show strikingly similar patterns of gene activity and can respond to the same drugs. What invisible thread could make so many mutations behave the same way?