Leukaemia Treatment Breakthrough
Published: March 29, 2007
Scientists have identified the cells responsible for relapses of leukaemia, the most common childhood cancer.
More than 20 per cent of children with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) will experience a relapse of their disease following treatment. Of these, most will never be cured.
Now, researchers from the Children’s Cancer Institute Australia have isolated the type of leukaemia cell responsible for relapse in patients diagnosed with ALL, the most common cancer in children.
“We have previously shown that these relapses were due to small numbers of cells which survived the treatment administered to the patient,” said investigator Professor Murray Norris. “However, it has been unclear whether these cells developed resistance to chemotherapy during the course of treatment or if they were already present in the child at the time their cancer was diagnosed.”
The findings of this study demonstrate that relapse in ALL patients can result from a minor resistant group of cells, present from the time of diagnosis. Undetected at diagnosis because of their very small numbers, this population of leukaemia cells remained in the patient’s body throughout the disease and continued to thrive even after the major population of sensitive leukaemia cells were destroyed and the patient appeared to have gone into remission.
“We have shown, for the first time, that children with a greater number of these cells at diagnosis are more likely to experience relapse much sooner after treatment,” said Norris. “Without new strategies to identify and attack these cells early in treatment, relapse appears inevitable for these patients.”
In the UK, almost 7,000 people are diagnosed with leukemia each year, and it’s the cause of more than 4,250 deaths, according to Cancer Research UK. About a third of all childhood cancers are leukaemias – and 80 per cent of those are ALL. Cancer accounts for around 20 per cent of all deaths in children aged 1 to 14 years.
Norris said that the study means that researchers can now develop treatments which specifically target the cells and are more effective than current options.
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