September is Leukemia and Lymphoma Awareness Month

join with aacr to find better ways to prevent and treat leukemia and lymphoma

Leukemia and lymphoma are cancers that affect the blood and lymph system, respectively.

Leukemia starts in the cells that form blood. Normally, most blood cells develop from cells in the bone marrow called stem cells. In a person with leukemia, the bone marrow makes abnormal white blood cells (leukemia cells). Unlike normal blood cells, leukemia cells don’t die when they should. They can crowd out normal white blood cells, red blood cells, and platelets. Consequently, it’s hard for normal blood cells to do their work. 

Experts estimated that 67,790 new cases of leukemia would be diagnosed in the United States in 2026 and 23,910 would die from this disease, according to the National Cancer Institute (NCI).

There are several types of leukemia. The four main types of leukemia are: 

• acute myeloid leukemia (AML);
• chronic myeloid leukemia (CML);
• acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL); and
• chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL)/small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL).

CLL/SLL is one of the most common types of leukemia in adults. ALL is the most common type of leukemia in children.

Lymphomas begin in cells of the lymph system, which is a part of the immune system. Lymph tissue is found throughout the body. As a result, lymphoma can begin almost anywhere. The disease occurs in two types: Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphomas.

Both types can occur in adults and children. An estimated 79,320 people in the United States will develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2026 and approximately 19,970 people will die from non-Hodgkin lymphoma, according to the NCI. For Hodgkin lymphoma, 8,920 new cases and 1,100 deaths are estimated for 2026.

Leukemia and Lymphoma Survivor Stories

At 65, Jack Moorman was retired, in good shape, and feeling great, but routine bloodwork showed that his white blood cell and platelet counts were abnormally low. Further tests would reveal that he had AML with a specific genetic mutation called KMT2A translocation. His doctor recommended he join a clinical trial testing a new therapy called revumenib that was designed to target KMT2A-rearranged AML. As part of the trial, Jack received revumenib with two other established AML treatments, azacitidine and venetoclax (Venclexta), and after just one 28-day cycle, he achieved complete remission. Read his story in the AACR Cancer Progress Report 2025.

In 2016, Vanessa Bañuelos was 25 years old and just beginning to build her future when she started experiencing persistent fatigue and severe back pain. As her symptoms worsened, Vanessa sought medical attention and was eventually diagnosed with ALL. After initially achieving remission following treatment with chemotherapy and radiation, Vanessa relapsed in October 2017. This time her doctors recommended chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, a type of immunotherapy where a patient’s own immune cells are modified to treat cancer and then infused back into the patient. Just 10 days after the infusion, Vanessa was in remission again. Read her story in the AACR Cancer Disparities Progress Report 2026.

Mikey Shock is a 24-year-old transgender woman and cancer survivor getting her PhD in clinical psychology with a focus on queer and transgender identities, health disparities, and the psychological effects of cancer survivorship. In 2022, she was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma and underwent eight chemotherapy sessions over 16 weeks, followed by 15 sessions of daily radiation. “The hardest part wasn’t treatment,” she said. “It was the mental aspect of reacclimating to life, living with survivor’s guilt, and bearing the toll that my trauma took on me.” Mikey’s experience has shaped her advocacy and desire to help ensure mental health is included as a part of cancer care. Read her story in the AACR Cancer Disparities Progress Report 2026.

More on leukemia and lymphoma

• The AACR Cancer Progress Report 2025 devoted a special section to a decade of progress against blood cancers that saw the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approve 29 new molecularly targeted therapies and 21 new immunotherapies to treat various types of hematologic malignancies. Thanks to the rapid pace of progress in precision early detection, prevention, diagnostics, and medicine, there were over 1.6 million survivors with a diagnosis of blood cancer living in the United States as of January 2025.
• The approvals of revumenib (Revuforj) in November 2024 and ziftomenib (Komzifti) in November 2025 for certain forms of AML can be traced back to the discovery of the crystal structure of human menin in 2012, research that was funded in part by an AACR grant in partnership with the Caring for Carcinoid Foundation. Cancer Research Catalyst, the AACR’s official blog, spoke with the researcher who made this discovery and traced how subsequent research performed by various scientists eventually led to new treatments for AML. Read the story on the blog.
• Many children and young adults with high-risk B-cell ALL receive total body irradiation and high-dose chemotherapy before a stem cell transplant, but radiation can cause long-term side effects. Early clinical trial results suggest that patients with no measurable residual disease after chemotherapy may be able to safely skip radiation prior to stem cell transplantation without compromising outcomes. Learn more in AACR’s patient magazine Cancer Today.
• Up to half of people who receive a donor stem cell transplant will experience acute graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), which is when donor cells recognize the body’s own cells as foreign and launch an attack. But new prevention strategies and treatments are helping to reduce instances of severe life-threatening GVHD as well as to control symptoms of this disease when it does occur. Learn more in Cancer Today.
• Researchers used single-cell RNA sequencing to create an atlas of blood cell development in order to better understand how AML forms. They identified 12 distinct cell-state patterns of AML, which could lead to future improvements in the diagnosis and treatment of AML. Learn more on Cancer Research Catalyst.
• Ethan Zohn, who won the reality television series “Survivor: Africa” in 2001, used an athlete’s mindset to get through lymphoma treatment twice. He now promotes exercise as an important part of cancer care. Read his story in Cancer Today.
• A combination of two targeted therapies, ibrutinib (Imbruvica) and venetoclax (Venclexta), helped many patients with CLL achieve deep, long-lasting remissions in a phase III clinical trial. Researchers found the two-drug approach was more effective than either standard chemoimmunotherapy or ibrutinib alone, allowing some patients to stop treatment while remaining cancer-free. Learn more in Cancer Today.
• In January 2024, the FDA announced that CAR T-cell therapies, which have been approved to treat certain lymphomas and leukemias, carry a black box warning label that indicates the risk of patients developing secondary T-cell malignancies. Several studies have since looked into this potential risk, with one group of researchers performing a systematic review of these studies and finding the rate of secondary cancers after CAR T-cell therapy was similar to the rate after other treatments. Learn more in this post on Cancer Research Catalyst.

How AACR Supports leukemia and lymphoma research

Hematologic Malignancies Working Group

The AACR sponsors a Hematologic Malignancies Working Group, whose mission is to analyze the current state of the field, identify opportunities for innovation to accelerate progress, and assist in guiding AACR’s ongoing and future programs and initiatives dedicated to saving lives from blood-based cancers and other related diseases.

Lymphoma-Focused Conferences

From June 24 to 27, 2026, AACR held the fifth international meeting on Advances in Malignant Lymphoma: From Discovery to Clinical Impact in Philadelphia, organized in cooperation with the International Conference on Malignant Lymphoma. The biennial meeting brought together basic and translational researchers around next-generation bispecific antibodies, BCL-6-targeted agents, cell therapies, and rare lymphomas. Read more about this conference on Cancer Research Catalyst.

Supporting Research

AACR awards grants to investigators with promising research related to leukemia and lymphoma. Grants in place include the following:

• In 2026, Jessalyn Ubellacker, MD, PhD, of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, received an AACR Trailblazer Research Grant for Early-Stage Investigators. Her research aims to define a new framework for targeting lymph node metastases to stimulate systemic immune responses against cancer.
• In 2025, Maria Florencia Cayrol, PhD, of the Institute of Biology and Experimental Medicine (IByME – CONICET), received an AACR Maximizing Opportunity for New Advancements in Research in Cancer (MONARCA) Grant for Latin America. She is examining how thyroid hormones may impact how patients with T-cell lymphomas respond to treatment with histone deacetylase inhibitors.
• In 2025, Sean E. Healton, MD, PhD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, received the AACR Hematologic Malignancies Research Fellowship. The aim of his work is to understand how lymphomas become like stem cells, which can lead to relapse. As part of his research, he plans to test at least two compounds to prevent this process.
• In 2025, Putzer J. Hung, MD, PhD, of the University of Pennsylvania received the AACR-John and Elizabeth Leonard Family Foundation Basic Cancer Research Fellowship to study how acute myeloid leukemia cells regulate ribosomal RNA synthesis, a process cancer cells lean on to sustain rapid growth.
• In 2025, Helena Yu, MD, of the University of California, San Diego, received the AACR-Swim Across America Pediatric Cancer Research Fellowship. She is exploring targeting developmental changes in protein homeostasis to improve hematopoietic stem cell transplant for pediatric cancer patients.
• In 2025, Nicole Michmerhuizen, PhD, of the University of Rochester, received the AACR-St. Baldrick’s Foundation Pediatric Cancer Research Grant. Her work is investigating NUP98-rearranged leukemia and how the principles at play in this cancer subtype may apply more broadly to other fusion-driven childhood cancers.

for more information

There are many different types of leukemia and lymphoma in adults and children. For more information on these different diseases, please see:

• These pages on leukemia in adults: acute lymphocytic leukemia, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, acute myeloid leukemia, chronic myelogenous leukemia, and hairy cell leukemia.
• These pages on lymphoma in adults: Hodgkin lymphoma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, primary central nervous system lymphoma, and AIDS-related lymphoma.
• These pages on leukemia and lymphoma in children and adolescents: childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia, childhood acute myeloid leukemia, and childhood non-Hodgkin lymphoma.