Jada Bascom Foundation
All conditions

Leukemias

Mixed-phenotype acute leukemia, B/myeloid

Also called: MPAL B/myeloid · biphenotypic acute leukemia · B/myeloid biphenotypic or bilineal acute leukaemia (older terms)

Classified by the World Health Organization as Mixed-phenotype acute leukaemia, B/myeloid.

What a donor has to do with this

For some people with this condition, a transplant using blood stem cells from an unrelated donor is part of the treatment guidelines. When a transplant is the right route and no one in the family matches, that donor comes from a registry. Not everyone with this condition has a transplant, and many never need one.

This is our reading of published transplant guidelines for this condition, not a measurement of how many people need a donor. Where a source actually counted donors, the figure and the people it counted are shown further down. Where none did, we say so rather than estimate.

This page is not written out in full yet

We have not written this condition out in full yet. What is on this page — how a donor fits in, who it affects, and the sources behind that — is researched and linked, but the plain-English explanation of the condition itself is still to come.

What the evidence says

Who it affects
Diagnosed across childhood and adulthood but is markedly more common in adults; no consistent sex or ancestry predominance is established. Source population/region/year: international paediatric-and-adult literature synthesized in a systematic review published 2018.
Treatments other than a transplant
ALL-like induction is commonly used, with lineage-targeted agents when appropriate; optimal induction is unsettled and allo-HCT is the principal consolidative curative strategy in eligible responders
If a transplant is used, the cells come from
Allogeneic peripheral blood, bone marrow or cord blood; registry cohorts include multiple donor types; dominant source not reported in the opened disease-specific sources
How often the donor was unrelated
Not reported. No source we could read states this for this condition, so we do not give a number. An estimate here would be a guess dressed as evidence.

Where this gets complicated

WHO5 separates B/myeloid, T/myeloid and genetically defined MPAL. Older EGIL biphenotypic cohorts do not map perfectly to current lineage criteria.

Written for transplant clinicians, not for patients. We quote it so you can see what the guidance actually says:
“mixed phenotype acute leukemia is potentially sensitive to graft-versus-leukemia and thus can benefit from allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation”

It describes what teams consider in general. It cannot say what applies to any one person. Read the source.

Registries need people

Joining a registry is a cheek swab and a short health form. You are not matched to a condition — you are matched to a person, and it could be someone with any of the conditions in this library. You are contacted only if you turn out to be a possible match for someone, and you can ask questions and decline before anything else happens.

Find your registry

Related conditions

Others in leukemias. They are genuinely different diseases with different treatments — the group name is not a diagnosis.

Where this came from

Mixed-phenotype acute leukemia, B/myeloid — what a bone marrow donor has to do with it | Jada Bascom Foundation