Funded by The Little Princess Trust and administered by CCLG
Lead investigator: Dr Rhys Morgan, University of Sussex
Award: £249,968.78
Awarded July 2023
Acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) is a type of blood cancer that affects children and young adults. Like other cancers, AML is caused by errors in the genetic code. The most common type of genetic mutation for children with this cancer is in the ‘mixed lineage leukaemia’ gene (MLL). Errors in this gene are linked to lower survival rates, meaning that safer and more effective new treatments are urgently needed for these patients.
AML cancer cells with errors in the MLL gene have too much of a protein that helps the cancer to grow, survive, and resist treatment. This protein is called beta-catenin and there aren’t currently effective medicines which can combat it in leukaemia. In order to develop new treatments against this protein, researchers need to know more about how it works and what it interacts with in leukaemia cells to promote cancer growth and survival.
Dr Rhys Morgan’s lab at the University of Sussex has uncovered two types of molecules that beta-catenin interacts with. One, called RNA, is similar to DNA and is part of how the cell reads the genetic code and translates it into proteins. The other is a group of proteins that bind to RNA, called RNA binding proteins.
RNA is used by cells in just one stage of translating the instructions in DNA into proteins which serve the essential functions in the cell, so it does not last for long. This process of translating DNA into proteins, via RNA, is very tightly controlled to make sure proteins are only made when they are needed. However, it seems that cancer cells can hijack this process to make sure more cancer promoting proteins are made.
In this project, Dr Morgan wants to investigate how beta-catenin binds to and controls RNA in leukaemia to see if these interactions are making AML worse. His team will be looking at how beta-catenin affects the lifespan of RNA and see where medicines could be targeted in order to stop its effects. Dr Morgan hopes that his work will help support the development of new targeted treatments that would help children with AML and other cancers with too much beta-catenin.