New research has uncovered a surprising role for so-called “jumping” genes that are a source of genetic mutations responsible for a number of human diseases. In the new study from Children’s Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern (CRI), scientists made the unexpected discovery that these DNA sequences, also known as transposons, can protect against certain blood cancers. These…
B-cell lymphocytosis, a condition in which individuals have increased levels of particular white blood cells, in some cases leads to blood cancer. As an international team of researchers now shows in samples from patients, both diseases exhibit similar epigenetic signatures that are forming very early during the course of the disease. Chronic leukemias often start insidiously. White blood cells…
One more piece of the puzzle has fallen into place behind a new drug whose anti-cancer potential was developed at the University of Alberta and is set to begin human trials this year, thanks to newly published research. “The results provide more justification and rationale for starting the clinical trial in May,” said first author John Mackey, professor and director of oncology clinical…
Leukemia frequently originates from the so-called leukemic stem cell, which resides in a tumor promoting and protecting niche within the bone marrow. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany, have found a new way to make these cells vulnerable by specifically dislodging these cells from their niches.
Early data from a clinical study suggest that blocking the Bruton tyrosine kinase (BTK) protein provided clinical benefit to a small group of patients with severe COVID-19. Researchers observed that the off-label use of the cancer drug acalabrutinib, a BTK inhibitor that is approved to treat several blood cancers, was associated with reduced respiratory distress and a reduction in the overactive…
Researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have discovered a way to move precision immunotherapy forward by using genomics to inform immunotherapy for multiple myeloma, a blood cancer, according to a study published in Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, in December. This is the first study to experimentally determine which…
For the first time, researchers from Helmholtz Zentrum München and the University Hospital of LMU Munich show that deep learning algorithms perform similar to human experts when classifying blood samples from patients suffering from acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Their proof of concept study paves the way for an automated, standardized and on-hand sample analysis in the near future. The paper was…
Researchers at the University of Birmingham have shown that it’s possible to produce a compound with anti-cancer properties directly from feverfew – a common flowering garden plant. The team was able to extract the compound from the flowers and modify it so it could be used to kill chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) cells in the laboratory. Feverfew is grown in many UK gardens, and also…
Oxford Gene Technology (OGT), A Sysmex Group Company, has celebrated the opening of its new facility in Cambridge, UK. The opening ceremony, which took place at the company’s new premises on the prestigious Cambridge Science Park, was attended by the Department for International Trade (DIT) and local media as well as top-level representatives from OGT and its parent company, Sysmex Corporation.…
Stem cells are surrounded and protected by the stem-cell niche – the microenvironment – of the tissue in which they are found. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have mapped the stem-cell niche in the bone marrow of mice and studied how it is influenced by developing leukemia. Their results, which are published in the journal Cell, show that the bone-marrow microenvironment is more complex…
New findings about a fatal form of blood cancer could aid the development of new drugs with significantly less harmful side effects than existing chemotherapy. The discovery could lead to novel treatments that efficiently eliminate blood cancer cells in acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), without harming healthy blood cells. Researchers have discovered how a protein in the body plays a key role in AML…
Mariette Barbier, an assistant professor in the West Virginia University School of Medicine, and her research team are investigating ways to keep cystic fibrosis patients and other at-risk populations—including patients hospitalized for severe burns or recovering from major surgery—from catching this deadly illness.
Flow cytometry has proved an invaluable diagnostic tool for leukaemia and lymphoma for almost three decades. Now, however, this is evolving in applications to seek out residual disease in cases and in fusion with molecular testing to advance its diagnostic potential. However, although recognised as fast, flexible and accurate, flow cytometry suffers from a lack of standardisation, according to…
For the first time, a team of international researchers have mapped the family trees of cancer cells in acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) to understand how this blood cancer responds to a new drug, enasidenib. The work also explains what happens when a patient stops responding to the treatment, providing important clues about how to combine enasidenib with other anti-cancer drugs to produce…
Two major projects feeding on big data and based in Spain have recently come under the spotlight: Mendelian, a tool to expedite rare diseases diagnosis, and Harmony, an EU platform that aims to improve targeted therapy in haematological cancer. Rare diseases affect as many as 6% of the Spanish population. Although this percentage is high, these conditions are individually rare, which complicates…
A team of researchers in Italy and Austria has determined that a drug approved to treat chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) may be less effective in a particular subset of patients. The study, published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, reveals that ibrutinib has a diminished capacity to delocalize and kill tumor cells expressing an adhesive protein called CD49d, but combining ibrutinib…
Bio-Rad Laboratories announces the launch of the "QXDx BCR-ABL %IS" Kit, the first CE-IVD digital PCR test that can monitor the molecular response of patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) to therapy.
Researchers in Germany have demonstrated that hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) transplants can be improved by treatments that temporarily prevent the stem cells from dying.
A protein found in the edible mushroom known as "shaggy ink cap" might be able to kill a type of leukemia cell, new research suggests.
