Laboratory Head Dr Teresa Sadras has been awarded a prestigious Leukemia Research Foundation grant to initiate an important new project on acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL).
ALL is the most common cancer in children and affects the blood and bone marrow, where the bone marrow overproduces white blood cells.
The Leukemia Research Foundation grant will allow Dr Sadras’ team to identify new treatment targets for ALL that has evolved to escape immunotherapies.
CD19 is a marker normally present on the surface of immune cells (B-cells). Research has shown that when B-cells become cancerous in the context of ALL, some of them will lose this CD19 marker and are then able to escape powerful existing cancer treatments.
Dr Sadras explains: “CD19-targeted immunotherapies, including CAR T-cell therapy and bispecific antibodies, have transformed treatment for patients with relapsed or difficult-to-treat B-cell ALL.
“However, some leukaemia cells can escape these therapies by losing or altering CD19, meaning the treatment can no longer recognise them.”
“This project will focus specifically on ALL cells that have escaped immunotherapy through loss of the CD19 antigen.”
Finding ways to kill resistant cancer cells is critical because they are likely to drive subsequent relapse, as they have already resisted significant pressure from initial treatment.
“Our goal is to identify treatments that could eliminate these resistant cells and ultimately help prevent or treat relapse after immunotherapy,” shared Dr Sadras.
The team will use generously donated human ALL samples from adults and children alongside laboratory models in their study.
“Rather than viewing CD19 loss only as a mechanism of treatment failure, we will assess whether the process of escaping therapy creates new vulnerabilities that can be targeted with treatments.”
“Ultimately, we hope this work will inform strategies that prevent CD19-negative cells from driving relapse in the first place.”
➡️ Learn more about the Leukaemia Biology & Functional Genomics Laboratory