Understanding the causes of post-transplant lymphoproliferative disease
PTLD is a blood cancer people can develop following stem cell transplant. It can be very difficult to treat and we urgently need to understand more about the disease so we can find better ways to treat it.
The challenge
After stem cell transplants, some people can develop a serious complication called post-transplant lymphoproliferative disease (PTLD), which is another type of blood cancer. However, it’s not known what causes this disease to develop and therefore it’s difficult to identify people who are at risk.
It’s thought that a virus called the Epstein-Barr virus might cause the disease to develop in some people and understanding more about this will help researchers understand how to develop new treatments for the disease.
The project
Dr Heather Long and her team plan to study tumour and blood samples from people with PTLD and will look for changes in immune cells. From this, they will try to understand how this type of blood cancer can become resistant to treatment and will look for possible new treatment combinations to treat the disease.
The future
By understanding more about the specific changes in immune cells seen in people with PTLD, the hope is that the team will be able to identify new treatment targets. In the future, this could help improve survival for people with the disease.