ABL1 and cancer: CML represents an important paradigm for understanding the molecular evolution of cancer because it was the first cancer shown to be initiated at the hematopoietic stem cell level by BCR-ABL; the first cancer found to undergo blastic transformation following malignant reprogramming of committed progenitors [5, 6]; and the first target of molecular therapy (eg, imatinib, dasatinib) based on targeting pathologically activated kinases such as BCR-ABL [7].