Using the immune system to improve treatment for people with myeloma
Myeloma is a blood cancer that is difficult to treat and we need to find new approaches to treat it. In this project, researchers will look at how we can use our immune system to do this.
The challenge
People with multiple myeloma often have periods where their disease is under control and periods where they require treatment. Many treatments are effective at bringing the disease under control, but myeloma remains difficult to treat and we need to find better treatments to give people with myeloma the best possible chance of survival.
The project
In this project, Dr Sarah Dimeloe and her team will look at how the immune system can be used to destroy cancer cells. The team have found that there is a lot of a protein called succinate in the bone marrow of people with myeloma and they think that this is preventing immune cells called T cells from destroying cancer cells. They will now investigate this further and will see whether T cells can be manipulated to block this protein, boosting their function, and allowing them to destroy myeloma cells.
The future
This research will give scientists a much better understanding of what causes myeloma to develop and progress which will support future work into finding new treatments for the disease. If this project shows that blocking succinate can improve the function of T cells, then it could lead to new ways to treat myeloma.