Funded by The Little Princess Trust and administered by CCLG
Lead investigator: Dr William Grey, University of York
Award: £198,564.40
Awarded March 2022
Acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) is an aggressive blood cancer, which can affect anyone from young children to the elderly. AML is the second most common type of leukaemia in childhood, accounting for two in ten cases. Despite improvements in treatment options, the average chance of survival after five years is still around 44% for children, whilst an adult’s chance of survival after only two years is even lower at around 15%.
The main reason that AML treatment fails is because not enough of the cells at the origin of the disease, called Leukaemic Stem Cells (LSCs), are killed. This means that the AML can come back. Whilst children can often have intensive chemotherapy, there are also significant side effects, which are harsh and can lead to health complications in the future.
The research team at the York Biomedical Research Institute, led by Dr William Grey, plan to study how proteins act inside the AML cells to understand both how and why AML occurs. This should reveal new targets for treatment that would only affect LSCs, meaning less toxicity to healthy cells. Using state-of-the-art technology, the researchers will map the evolution of proteins in individual cells as AML develops, when LSCs evade therapy and how this differs from healthy tissue.
Dr William Grey hopes to find new ways to prevent toxic side effects by targeting LSCs at the origin of the disease. They will also look to understand why AML develops from healthy tissue, to see if there is a way to prevent AML from developing.