Understanding how leukaemia stem cells may help develop new treatments for AML

AML is an aggressive form of blood cancer which can be very difficult to treat. Around 3,000 people are diagnosed with AML every year in the UK. In recent years researchers have made great progress in understanding what causes AML. This has resulted in new treatments and better outcomes for some people with the disease. Unfortunately, many people with AML still see their cancer return. This is because of a small a group of cancerous cells called leukaemic stem cells (LSC). LSC are rare but more resistant cancer cells that can lie inactive. Many treatments for AML work by seeking out and destroying the cancer cells, however LSC can remain undetected and survive. Eventually, they can ‘wake up’ and begin to divide and multiply, so people see their cancer come back. There is a need to understand how these LSC remain undetected and resist treatment so we can find new ways to target and eliminate them for good.

In this project, Dr Nisha Narayan wants to build on research that has looked at LSC in people with AML. It is thought that people with AML may have more than one type of LSC and that they may not respond to treatment in the same way. Although some treatments may seek out and destroy some LSC, others are able to survive and eventually the cancer can come back. Dr Narayan wants to understand this better using a new scientific technique called cellular barcoding. This works by giving each cell a unique ‘label’, allowing researchers to track the behaviour of individual cells to see how they act over time. Dr Narayan wants to use this new technique to identify the different types of LSC present in people with AML and see exactly which ones are more likely to survive treatment and cause the cancer to come back.

It is hoped this project will deepen our understanding of the different types of LSC in AML and how likely is for the cancer to come back. By identifying the different types of LSC and their behaviours the researchers plan to predict how individuals might respond to existing treatments. They hope to be able to use this information to help develop more personalised and effective therapies in the future for people with AML. Ultimately this knowledge could lead to development of new treatments in the future that specifically target the LSC. As LSC are present in many types of blood cancer, this research could help in new treatments across the wider blood cancer community.