Understanding how acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) can go undetected by the immune system

Acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) is a fast-growing type of blood cancer that can be very difficult to treat. It affects a type of blood cell called myeloid cells by stopping them from growing properly. This stops your blood doing the things it normally does to keep your body healthy. Many people with AML are treated with targeted therapies like chemotherapy, but these treatments don’t always work, and many people see their cancer come back. Immunotherapy is treatment which harnesses the power of the immune system to seek out and destroy the cancer cells. This form of treatment has shown real success in the last 10 years in other cancers.

Dr Lappin is studying genetic changes, common in AML to see how they affect the way cancer cells interact with the immune system. Their experiments show that certain common genetic mutations, may help leukaemia cells “hide” from immune attack. However, when the researchers treated cells with existing drugs that target these mutations, sometimes in combination with standard chemotherapy, the cancer cells released immune-stimulating signals. This could make the cancer more visible to the immune system, and more responsive to immunotherapy. With this new funding, the team at Queen’s University Belfast will conduct experiments to see how blood cancer cells communicate with the immune system, and find out how they are able to hide, then divide and multiply.

If successful, researchers hope they will be able to find new ways to strengthen the immune system to target the AML cells. Ultimately this could offer new alternative ways to treat AML with less side effects for patients.