WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Distinctive genetic changes occur in the cancer cells that trigger relapse in patients with the most common type of childhood cancer, according to a study that may offer new hope for beating the disease.
Writing in the journal Science on Thursday, the scientists described key genetic differences in cancer cells of children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, or ALL, when they were first diagnosed compared to when they had a relapse.
ALL is a cancer of the blood and bone marrow. Most children with it can be cured, but among those who suffer a relapse only about 30 percent survive.
LONDON (AFP) – Researchers at the University of Cambridge said Thursday they have found that a drug originally developed to treat leukaemia can halt and even reverse the debilitating effects of multiple sclerosis (MS).
In trials, alemtuzumab reduced the number of attacks in sufferers and also helped them recover lost functions, apparently allowing damaged brain tissue to repair so that individuals were less disabled than at the start of the study.
Mixed-lineage leukemia (MLL) is a rare type of blood cancer which occurs in 5-10 percent of child and adult leukemia sufferers and more than three-quarters of infants diagnosed with leukemia. MLL is quite different than the common form of leukemia in that while most leukemia starts in the lymph nodes or bone marrow, MLL may occur in both simultaneously and usually doesn’t respond well to chemotherapy. However, a surprising discovery may lead to new treatments for this hard-to-treat cancer.
Through routine screening tests in the lab, a team of researchers from Stanford University in California found that blocking a sugar-regulating enzyme helped mice with MLL live significantly longer and better than untreated mice. The enzyme, glycogen synthase kinase 3 (GSK3), was previously found to help suppress cell growth in other cancers. “This finding was quite unexpected. GSK3 has never been implicated in promoting cancer,” study senior author Dr. Michael Cleary, a professor of pathology and of pediatrics, said in a Stanford news release.
