Lead investigator: Prof Ken Mills, Queen's University Belfast
Funded by CCLG and CCLG Special Named Funds including #teamkai, Super Sofia, Elliott's Warrior Fund and the Toti Worboys Fund
Funded January 2019
Award: £74,997.00
Leukaemia is the most commonly occurring cancer in children (30%) with acute lymphocytic leukaemia (ALL) accounting for 80% of cases and acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) the remaining 20%.
Treatment and outcome for ALL patients has improved substantially over the years with overall survival (OS) now at 90%. Unfortunately, the outcome for paediatric AML is not as good with OS around 60%. Patients also have higher risk of relapse and of not responding to induction therapy and when combined with the treatment side effects, these young people have a bleak outlook from diagnosis.
This study will investigate the two new novel drug combinations that we have identified through a unique method of combination screening; multiplex screening for interacting compounds in acute leukaemia (MuSICAL). We focused on apoptosis (cell death) and screened all pairwise combinations of 80 apoptosis inducing drugs using MuSICAL which identified drugs which had no effect on apoptosis as single agents but were highly effective when combined.
Two of the combinations identified, “ABT-737 plus Purvalanol A” and “SU9516 plus Poziotinib”, will be tested and validated further in the laboratory for the treatment of paediatric AML. We will determine the mechanisms used by the compounds in combination to deduce why the combination is more effective than there use as single agents.
We hope the drug combinations we have identified show sufficient promise to be moved into clinical trials and eventually to improve outcomes for paediatric AML patients.
Project updates
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