Glucocorticoid receptors in subpopulations of childhood acute lymphocytic leukemia.

these patients, in general, have a more aggressive form of disease (2, 28, 29). Most patients have lymphoblasts that lack identifiable surface markers. Thus, the subcategories of acute Iymphocytic leukemia in humans probably repre sent proliferation of different clones of lymphoblasts. There are known differences in glucocorticoid susceptibility among functional subcategories of lymphocytes in mice (24, 27, 31, 32). We therefore assayed lymphoblasts for a variety of surface markers and then examined lympho blast populations with known characteristics for differ ences in specific cyhoplasmic GA activity and responsive ness as a function of these various surface markers.