Advancing treatment for leukaemia

Leukaemia often progresses quickly and requires urgent treatment. It affects a type of blood cell known as blast or leukaemia cell. These leukaemia cells multiply quickly and grow in numbers, crowding out healthy blood cells. Leukaemia is currently treated with chemotherapy, which destroys cancer cells but also damages healthy cells in the body. There is a need to develop cancer treatments that specifically target cancer cells, leaving healthy cells unharmed. Research has focused on drugs that block a protein called menin that is crucial for the growth of certain types of leukaemia. However, these drugs only work for people with certain types of leukaemia, and many people do not respond to them.

In this project, Professor Milne and his team will deepen their understanding of how blocking the menin protein stops cancer cells from being able to grow and multiply. They also want to understand more about how they can make drugs that target this protein effective for more people with leukaemia. They will conduct experiments in the lab, looking for ‘weak spots’ in the genes of leukaemia cells that could be targeted. They will then test their ideas using samples from patients and special models they have created in the lab to understand more about how the menin protein works. This will help to understand how drugs that block menin could be used to help treat more people with this disease.

If successful, this research may help to increase understanding of how the menin protein works in cancer cells and what makes some cancer cells more sensitive to these types of drugs. Researchers can then use this information to figure out how to make these drugs work for more people with leukaemia. Ultimately this means that more patients can receive newer, more targeted treatments, with less side-effects.