A 59-year-old man was admitted because of generalized lymphadenopathy with fever and vomiting. His peripheral blood showed leukocytosis with a WBC of 93,500/microliters, and the bone marrow picture revealed a predominance of blast cells. The blasts were negative for peroxidase, alpha-naphthyl butyrate esterase and PAS, and had the phenotype of CD 7, 13 and 33 positive. A diagnosis of AML M0 was made, based on the criteria of the NCI-sponsored workshop in 1988. His initial status had been compromised by acute renal failure which necessitated hemodialysis. He responded partially to chemotherapy consisting of daunorubicin, cytarabine and prednisolone. However leukemia recurred and the patient suffered from various episodes of infection and died six months after admission. The Southern blotting showed the germ line configuration for TCR-beta chain and immunoglobulin heavy chain genes. No messenger RNA was detected for myeloperoxidase, c-myc and c-jun, while c-fms, c-fos and c-myb were expressed on Northern blotting. It is intriguing to detect c-fms and c-fos expression in these poorly differentiated leukemic cells.