Improving our understanding of leukaemia that has spread throughout the body

Acute leukaemias are the commonest childhood cancer. Leukaemia normally starts in the bone marrow, but can spread elsewhere, including the skin, lymph nodes and testes/ovaries. This is called extramedullary (EM) leukaemia. EM leukaemia can be very challenging to treat. At present, we don't know what the biological differences are between bone marrow leukaemia and EM leukaemia. This project will study tissue samples from patients with bone marrow leukaemia and EM leukaemia to look at differences in the environment that the leukaemia cells live in between the two sites. Knowledge of these differences may allow us to design better treatments for EM leukaemia.